The Dog Comes With

Project management

2012-01-25T02:18:00.000-08:00

This stuff is hard.

I have a project at work right now, with a hard deadline, and I am the manager. I had no idea how I would like it, or if I'd be any good at it, since I've never done this before. I'm usually pretty happy in the creative underclass of a project, getting to think up ideas.

It is a lot of checking in with people, and although that can be tiring, in the sense that I am checking e-mail for work reasons from the time I wake up to when I go to sleep, it also means I am interacting with a lot of people again. That latter part has been really nice. I'd forgotten how much easier it is to be creative and productive, when you can bounce ideas off of others and are not the only one responsible for coming up with things. I've had some great 3 and 4 hours sessions of brainstorming, some really productive shorter meetings, and keeping motivated has been much easier.

But the looking up details, checking with people on small questions, keeping all the info together, that I'm not so sure about. Since this is a small project I think I can keep it all together pretty much as I did before - mostly in my head with a few things written down on paper and on my computer. Deadlines and such. This is because there aren't too many overlapping deadlines, and there are not so many different companies and entities that need to be coordinated, so an illness or a travel restriction is more easily negotiated.

I don't think I'm cut out for really large scale project management, though. I just don't know how much more rewarding it would be than draining. And I've only had a glimpse of having to depend on difficult personalities to get something done, and I defaulted to being very gracious when I probably should have stopped earlier and said "no, we have a tough deadline, and I really need you to do this as quickly as possible." I can tell I have very little idea about what constitutes a "right now!" need, and what can wait. And I tend to assume people will do things in the next hour when they say "right away" and that isn't necessarily the case. I'm not great at pressing people to clarify what they mean in these cases. Makes me really nervous. Not a great place to start for management.

What I do think I can do fairly well is be okay with "good enough." Don't get me wrong, I am infinitely able to be idealistic about things, about what could be if we just had enough time, good will, money. How people should behave. What the "right" way to do something is. But, when surounded by a few other pragmatic individuals, I can totally do the realist thing, too. And that surprised me.

Anyway, it has been interesting. I will be happy when it is over. It will go on my resume.

And if this post has already put you to sleep, check out the Star Wars fan version online. The whole of Star Wars, made out of 15 second clips submitted to the project by everyday people. I watched only 6 minutes of it, but what great submissions, from a family of kids in paper towel Storm Trooper outfits, to an office of coworkers in white plastic salad bowl helmets, to animated sequences.

A new year

2012-01-02T04:37:00.001-08:00

Im not sure what to write about today. I just wanted to write, so that this blog doesn't lapse.The flight to Canada, with A, went fine. I had more than enough toys and distractions and low expectations that things were actually smooth. Except for that Cares Flight Harness, that we wound up investing some $200 in with express shipping,that the Air Canada attendant basically looked at and said she didn't have time to help me figure it out and had no idea why someone told me I had to buy it. In the end, A slept in her stroller sleeping bag, threaded through with the seat belt. And it took only 30 seconds for me to get thoroughly creeped out by The Wiggles on the kids videos selection on the flight. Christmas was lovely, and A has now fuly understood the concept of a present and opening one.mShe knows what a reindeer is and that a snowman is made of snow. Granted, she may have scale issues with the snowman concept, because we could only build a 1 1/2 foot tall one in the melting Missouri snow. She likes the song Jingle Bells, and I find myself disturbed by all manner of other Christmas song lyrics. Baby It's Cold Outisde basically sounds like a date rape ballad. Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is all about making fun of someone until he turns out to have a skill useful to others, and those let's seem to be pretty fickle giving their love away to the new team captain. I am, however, suffering food culture shock in America. There is so much more salt and sugar than I've become used to, in everything from meatballs and wings, to casual restaurants, to even Trader Joes foods. I've cooked so much more this year, and. Mostly from scratch, that my palate is overwhelmed with processed foods. Now, this state I find myself in is a luxury, I know. Because I a not working full time, can get the bulk kf my groceries delivered and have time to then shop at the farmers market. Heck, because we have daily farmers markets and so many bakeries in Zurich. And, true to the cliche, I am now completely unused to ice in my water at restaurants.But seeing A surrounded by family, having such a great time meeting them all again, playing, being fawned over, and even having to negotiate their personalities, has been good. She will have relationships with these people that are different than my relationships with them, and that ranges from a learning experience for all of us, to ok, to a good thing. And after this stop in Cicago, I will go home to Zurich with another great AirBNB experience (renovated loft with wood floors, antique metal cage elevator, right in the middle of town), and after I hit that DSW store, I hope a few new pair of shoes to get me through the size 11 desert that is Switzerland.

The holidays approach

2011-12-15T01:39:00.000-08:00

Oh boy. I'm about to fly trans-Atlantic with a toddler. One who has recently started practicing the power of "NNNNNOOOOOO!" much more, um, forcefully. Meltdowns about not getting to carry the yogurt cup to the table are no longer surprising.

(Let's just get this straight, it was an open yogurt cup, and said toddler was in my arms, and we were already, seemingly contently, on the way to the dining room from the kitchen. About 5 feet into our 10 foot trek, I'd say. And said toddler started grabbing for said cup at the same time as whining about it. Not gonna happen, toddler. Not on my not-yet-fully-awake morning watch. And not in your already-school-clothing outfit.)

And I'm already in a mood. Or was. Or maybe it started just after her tantrum. Or just before. Tough to tell some days.

Then M went into the living room where I had just placed her on the couch, screaming "Nein!", to do something that wound up stopping the screaming, and I about lost it on him.

Anyway, I'm a bit overwhelmed with the thought of traveling on an 8 hour, daytime flight, with said toddler and her lack of napping these days. Holy shit, this could really suck. And being that I am in such a foul mood, you know what else I'm refusing to do? Give out chocolates or apologies to those sitting around us in the airplane for having a child, and for my child acting like a child. Last year I was all about the apologizing. This year, not so much. I shouldn't have to apologize that I have a kid, who is a toddler, who has tantrums. Not in the way the article which suggested said chocolates actually did the suggesting. It sets up a nasty situation where you already indicate to others that your child is not ok existing. Sure tantrums suck, and I'll be the closest adult to the center of that suck, over and over again on that flight, and the act of then apologizing to someone else about it.....well, let's just say we're all happy I'm not flying today.

I get that I was clueless before I had kids, but I never gave someone the evil eye for their kids behavior on a plane. Oh wait, ok, maybe when I was pregnant and we flew business class, and the mom put a 4 and 6 year old in seats in back of us, went to sit across the aisle, put her headphones on and mentally checked out. But then, it was the height of swine flu scare, kid was fighting with his brother and coughing towards the pregnant lady who hadn't gotten a shot yet. Yup, I was kind of pissed off then. And the kid was actually really good about covering his mouth every 30 seconds. Which is how often he coughed....the whole 7 hours. And I didn't have a lot of good will for that mom on that flight.

Now is different. On Monday I was on a super packed tight tram, around 6:30pm, from the train station, on a rainy night, and two parents got on with a 4 year old, and twin 2 year olds. No stroller, and who knows where it would have fit anyway. No one gave them a seat. The 4 year old had to stand, the 2 year olds were getting upset, and soon all three were crying. Still, no one gave the parents a seat, and only once a big stop came and people got out, could they even give the kids a place to sit. Still crying. Mom starting to just get upset with crying kids. I had no A with me at the time, and had just spent 5 hours on a work trip, in blissful silence. So I started making funny faces at one of the twins. Immediately she stopped crying. Then I included the other twin. Ditto. And up til now, no one on the tram, especially those near the family, had even smiled a "gee that sucks to be a parent right now, huh?" smile at them. And it took 5 seconds and a tiny loss of dignity to help get the kids quiet. From someone who hadn't had to deal with them the previous 5 hours. It wasn't hard. WTF, tram riders?

So, while I hope there are sympathetic parents on our flight, for when I've reached the end of my rope, blog posts about how I need to ingratiate myself to those around me just because I have a kid, make me feel pretty defiant. The business men who snore like hogs never hand out earplugs to those around them and apologize ahead of time. Neither do the people who get drunk and loud. They are just "who they are, deal with it."

Yes, I know, I may have to try to get some goodwill going on that flight, but part of me so wants to just throw wet diapers at anyone staring us down. All those people who think they know better, think I should be doing something different. Whew. Got myself all riled up.

And since this rant has not managed to calm me down that much, I'm assuming I'm just having a crappy mood day today. Huh.

Artsy craftsy home stuff

2011-11-29T03:54:00.003-08:00

I got a lamination machine about a month ago, used it for make-your-own placemat favors for A's birthday, and am now busting at the seams with other arts and crafts ideas. A lot of them center around artwork for A's room. Or life. Well, okay her life is about contained by what is in her room.

And all the toys in the living room.

But what is missing, is artwork. I want there to be some stuff that goes along with the Lithuanian songs and stories she is learning. Because while there are pages and pages of links for Peter Rabbit, Velveteen Rabbit, Goodnight Moon and other English kids books, as well as English nursery rhymes, there are pretty slim pickings when it comes to the Two Roosters (chickens, goats, a fly a mosquito and a mill all make an appearance here - they have yet to meet Nabisco), and I Planted A Clover (on a hill, it sprouted, it grew, it bloomed, I picked it, all on that hill, folks).

The clover song is the current favorite for bed time, after the lights are out. And I'd like there to be some reminders of this once she is older.

My first thought was to illustrate (or collage the hell out of) a laminated page book, with the song lyrics. Sure, it could be a plain paper book, but (1) it would get ripped to shreds, and (2) my laminator requires me to mention it by name in 76% of all craft project proposals I have in my head.

So then, after I made the requisite lamination pitch, I've been considering stamping or (due to a great connection I just met, who is also Lithuanian, 50 feet down the street from me) linocut type illustrations for a book or a piece of art to hang on the wall. Think old fashioned, heavy lines, each character is different colors.

Like from this Etsy shop: WindsparrowStudio

And now I'm also getting excited about the idea of making shadow boxes for some of the songs. The first step in this direction was this Etsy shop, theaterclouds, with its photographs of shadowbox type settings. (You could laminate them, of course). Cool already, but she offers different version of each done with different lighting conditions.

Of course, I'm not going to be setting up my own photography studio, so making a real shadowbox is going to have to be enough. And I'm thinking of starting with just empty tissue or shoe boxes. To try out the idea. I see 5 hills, each with some lifestage of that clover taking shape already.

Yeah. At least in my mind.

Table manners

2011-11-24T03:17:00.001-08:00

This year has been better. Better than last year this time. I made A's birthday cupcakes myself, instead of having someone else make them, and more significantly, I had the energy to clean up after the making of said cupcakes. We were still dragging quite a bit last year at this time, especially as the one year anniversary of A's birth came around. This year, there was nothing in my mind about her birth throughout our 4 days of celebrating her birthday, and singing to her and watching her open presents and eat cupcakes. There was no connection left to the difficult birth experience. Or the more difficult year following that.

And now, even though the Swiss do not celebrate Thanksgiving, I'm happy to say that we do. Not in any cook-it-yourself super meal, but we will be going over to some friends' with my grandmother's vermicelli stuffing in hand, for dinner. And a few hours later, we will come home, and go to sleep. No big family event, no black Friday shopping, no Friday off work. But it is still nice to take a half day off, cook some familiar food, and rest.

Now, given that we will not be at a big family gathering, the table talk will probably be pretty mild. Good manners between acquaintances are sure to lead the evening. Politeness, no name calling, talking back, inappropriate making fun of others. And hopefully we can all remember to keep our ever-moving feet off the table, A. There was a post this week on the NYTimes Motherlode blog about manners at the table.

As A gets older, we are having to once again figure out what is and isn't acceptable at the table, and how to ask her to use her voice and not her tears. Pacifiers and feet are not currently welcome at the table. We try to have a family meal together at least once a day, and everyone should get to participate. Not sure how we will teach A to not interrupt constantly. Turn taking is probably not high on the list of a small being who doesn't even get conversation yet. But of course, as parents, we want our kid to be polite and well mannered at a meal.

So what happened in academia? How come, within a culture which sometimes pursues the construction of intellectual family trees (who was whose advisor, or academic parent, etc), we don't teach table manners in setting where we all gather to interact verbally. Why is a rudely phrased question from a faculty member or postdoc allowed to ride? How come you never hear another senior member of a faculty ask an aggressive question-asker to please rephrase using a calm voice? How come you don't hear most advisors having a talk with (maybe this happens behind closed doors, but who knows) a particularly aggressive grad student to explain the rules of friendly science engagement How come we encourage shy women to speak up more and not be so scared to talk, but don't ask the people who constantly talk over their classmates to give others a turn? Dismissive comments seem to perfectly acceptable, as if being nice, or polite, or not getting into a raised-voice discussion about someone's work, and not calling other academics idiots behind their backs, marks a weaker scientist.

When did being mean become equated with scientific rigor?

Easy black bottom cupcakes

2011-11-19T16:08:00.001-08:00

A's birthday is coming up, and I've been looking everywhere for pumpkin cupcake with cream cheese frosting recipes. And I'm fine in that department. But I've spent way too much time at a time when I don't have time, looking for the chocolate cupcake recipe.

Because I feel better this year and don't have to buy a cake for it to be healthy. I can make my daughter's birthday cake myself. And I have cocoa powder and chocolate pieces (haven't opened the bag yet, but I know better than to call them chips) in the pantry waiting for me to find a recipe. And it started getting too much.

Not in a depression way, but in a mind-racing sort of way.

And then it hit me.

I have Whole Foods brownie mix in my pantry. I have just out easied all the "easy" recipes on the web. And will not have to put vinegar in a cupcake the day I will serve it, never having tried this before.

Boo. Ya.

The other-people-on-the-bus are "not so bad, not so bad, not so bad...."

2011-11-09T00:08:00.000-08:00

Actually, this has nothing to do with the bus, other than being about the Swiss people who are the polar opposite of the tsk-tsk-ers. Yesterday was the first long, grey, chilly day. Ooh, it took all I had to get showered and actually go into work, where I am still struggling to find a groove, and not just feel like I do random things no one cares about. (Note: I may actually be doing things no one cares about, I'm just not ready to feel that way yet. Hey, we all have an ego.)

I had the dog with me and went to get A from school. Since all our potential playdates are busy throwing up all over their moms and dads, and it was grey, we walked through the fields, talked about the cows and goats and other dogs we saw, and headed down to our street, destination: home. For some Ovomaltine, and some baking and playing inside. On the way, we met a black man with a cute little dog.

He said her name was Caramela, and I found it strange that we had our discussion in English, and that he seemed so upbeat. What was that all about? Was he a hustler? Why was he smiling so much. Yeah, this place does that to your brain. He went ahead of us into an apartment complex and as we got near it, a woman was getting out of her car. She looked at me (baby on my back, dog in hand) with this huge smile.

"Seriously, who are these people?", I'm thinking. She wanted to meet the dog. Suddenly, she wanted to know how she didn't know us since she knows most dogs in the neighborhood. Ok, she must be a hustler, because what neighborhood? The people around here barely look at each other, much less interact in a neighborly way most of the time. We got to chatting, that she and her husband have a dog named Caramela, and the man walking the dog must have been one of the foreign exchange students coming to their potluck they host every year, and got asked to walk the dog. No wonder he spoke English first, and had a skip in his step. The man hadn't ridden the tram enough yet! He was newly from Ghana. A ha. And, thank god. For Swiss people like this woman, who was not only hosting newcomers but within minutes of meeting me had made sure I called her phone, knew what apartment she is in, and said we should come over, with our dog, for dinner some night.

What? Awesome.

At work, I had found that one person I thought totally ignored me by email had just sent a note to a different, unused e-mail account of mine.

And later last night I spent 2 hours out swing dancing with some smiling Swiss people. Who dance really well.

Do you know how much I needed just one of those things to happen yesterday? I have to figure out how to make them last for the week now, because it is a gray day again, I continue not to have a standard way I spell that light black color, and I could learn to like it here if the frown-to-smile ratio stays below 50%.

And to bring it on home, how cute are these alligator scarves? Am I going to knit one? I doubt it, I found them while looking for a tutorial on putting a pocket on a knit vest. I can barely knit straight, these babies would probably break me. I'm sticking to things I can actually finish. Hmmm. Maybe I'll just sew some pockets on afterwards....

The judgemental old ladies on the bus, go "tsk, tsk, tsk,..."

2011-11-08T00:12:00.000-08:00

Currently, A is singing a lot. Swiss German songs from daycare, the ABC song from (I guess) the Fish School app on the iPhone, and now The Wheels on the Bus. Each verse has great little hand gestures, and it repeats well, and no wonder kids like it. Good stuff.

And, heck, we ride the bus a lot. The wheels on those buses go round and round. The doors go open and shut. The driver, however, does not say "move on back", or even the Swiss German version, and sometimes we wish he did. And the people on the bus, instead of going "up and down", kind of get flung forward and backwards, sometimes landing on the floor during a particularly, um, enthusiastic application of either accelerator or brakes.

And there is a characteristically Swiss verse to "the Bus" song here, that keeps getting my goat. See title of this post.

Twice now, in the last two weeks, as A and I have been riding public transport to a birthday party, once in matching puppy outfits, once in plainclothes, the 60 and over age group ladies have decided to fix their disapproving gazes, curled sneering noses and lips, and shaking heads on us. The first time, when A and I were in puppy outfits, and looked pretty home made, cute, non-Halloweenish, A on my back, I went from smiling on the outside and inside, to barely smiling at the b)(*#&$ on the outside. People here judge you a lot.

Yes, they judge you everywhere. But in India, I knew I didn't fit it, and that just my lighter colored hair meant I was going to be stared at. In Chicago, they know better than to show it lest a "oh no you di'nt" altercation starts up, and my British friends tell me that although you are judging left and right you never, ever, show it on your face and you may even apologize or smile for nothing in the direction of the one you are judging.

Here, they put on their nasty face, shake their head, stare, and sometimes even wag a finger.

So it happened again last weekend, the second incident, when we were not in costume, and this time it was two ladies. I assumed it wasn't us they were looking at at first. But when we got off the tram, they were still staring (this part still amazes me), and when I smiled at them, they just stared back. This time, I was ready for more action. As the tram pulled away, I raised my eyebrows, kept smiling, and waved at them. And kept my inner smile.

It sort of redefined that first incident for me, too. Of course it is them, and not me. And since people so openly judge you here for their version of right and wrong, one day you get told off for having the dog off leash on the walk near the house, and the next, for having her off leash. On the same walk.

Still, it would be nice to have some more ammunition (not the metal, live kind, as one of my Facebook friends suggested, tongue in cheek, that he would lift his jacket and show them his piece). Like some things to say. And a particularly vexing way (to the perp) to say them. My friend L, who was over for a playdate with his daughter yesterday, and is Swiss, recounted his approach to some people on a train once. I think he is self-possessed, and not flustered, enough, to handle these things well. Or at least in a way I would like to. So I've decided there should be an iPhone app, where we come up with the most common 100 finger-wagging situations you encounter here, that he can record a slightly shaming, but smiling, video response to, and the app user can play them in the direction of the disgusted party. We could name it "L tells you off, in Swiss German."

On failing, and then not.

2011-11-02T02:23:00.000-07:00

Given that I work in science education, reading over and over articles and websites and books that stress the importance of trying things out yourself, it is surprising how often I still forget to apply that to everyday life. I have spent, my usual, 5 hours thinking about this bathroom light contact paper cover. I have found that there are no single hole punches of the office supply variety for sale in Switzerland (I refuse, so far, to buy a craft one with smaller holes, for $17). I have seen all sorts of images on my Google searches for Scandinavian designs, patterns, animals, and Mid Century Modern designs, patterns, animals. I've gone from the idea of abstract shapes to sheep silhouettes, to fish, to triangles arranged all over the place when I realized how poorly one pair of scissors cut contact paper.

I had two pieces cut out with the nasty scissors, that were rough on the edges, was just thinking how to get my hands on a friend's hole puncher since the cheap two hole one I bought really is for Swiss bills only, and this morning I finally got fed up. I found the better scissors, I told myself just to try something, anything, to get a feel for the light, the material, the results.

And there it is. I'm done, happy enough with it, it dims the light as I wanted, and since it is a nasty fluorescent lamp, the cover on it was plastic that doesn't get very warm. Perfect for white contact paper.

And I have a much better sense for working with the stuff now. There really is no substitute for learning something in context, instead of just trying to perfect the idea before even touching, playing, ripping, and messing up the material.

I'm thinking that any design tradition that embraces imperfect lines and organic shapes, is the one for me.

In other news, I realized last night that upgrading the desktop computer to iLife (iPhoto) '11 has deleted all my photos of A and anything else from before one year ago. Her whole first year pretty much, and M and my life together before that. I am extremely disappointed with Apple. I have all the photos also on my laptop which will never be getting that upgrade, so I am just pissed off instead of completely destroyed and emotionally broken. On some of the Mac forums, people are chiding those who did not back up their computers and actually lost their kids' first many years of life photos, comparing it to preparing for a natural disaster. Because, of course, we all decide to upgrade to earthquake '11 as soon as it hits the stores and we should treat a company like Apple as a force of nature, and not expect more from it. Uh huh.

Craft websites

2011-11-01T02:27:00.000-07:00

I need a place to store all of these links and ideas, so this is a purely selfish post.

1. play kitchen from recycled nightstand

2. DIY rubber stamps made with old erasers.

3. Heck, just the CURBLY website in general , for things like popsicle stick magnets, and, well, just go look.

4. And Pinterest

5. Knittable floor poof

6. And for those of us who still wind up at IKEA more than flea markets...IKEAHACKERS

I may put more stuff up here, especially if anyone has suggestions. For now, I am sated.

Kids and art and such

2011-11-01T01:38:00.000-07:00

In the previous month, we've started collecting craft supplies at our house, hoarding them for the impending cold, rainy, grey winter months when A and her friends will be spending more time inside than at the playground. We're going to need something to keep us occupied. And instead of buying new toys, M and I have decided to see what we can make with the empty water bottles, eggs cartons, tissue boxes and toilet paper rolls. While the other objects are all still waiting the arrival of enough peers to make a bowling alley/construction set, the toilet paper rolls have already made their debut. M draws little people on them. It may still be a bit early for A to appreciate the roll people.

A paper towel roll became a crocodile that could eat, and then poop, all manner of object. That one went over a bit better. I state for the record, that was not my idea.

It seems that other people also reuse toilet paper rolls for art projects. Just a little more highbrow and fricking amazing.

I found that artist's website while searching the internet for paper cutout patterns or designs I can use on some white contact paper I have, that I want to cover A's bathroom light (one of those soul sucking long fluorescent deals) with, to dim it a bit for evening tooth brushing time. I think that detail is out of my league. Perhaps a few stars or moons might be achievable with minimal self injury from the exacto knife.

A has just gotten over a long cold. Ok, not gotten over, but the fever and extreme cough are gone long enough that she can go back to school, we can all sleep through more hours of the night, and I can recover. And I know she's feeling better because she has her characteristic energy back. To jump and sing, to wail and cry on the floor, to say "NO!" over and over again, and to eat. All the raisins out of many slices of Panettone. I used butter on the remaining bread parts to get those in as part of yesterday's snack.

And just as parental exhaustion over a toddler illness gives way to parental exhaustion over a back-to-normal force of nature, I think again about the second child.

When you start dating someone your family likes, "when are you getting engaged?" seems to come up way earlier than you are ready to answer. This doesn't stop through "married", "having kids", all the way through "second kid." I think people who ask this have either lower-key kids, no kids, or lots of help with their kids.

Sure, I'm getting to the edge of my 30s, and it may take us a long time to conceive again, it may not even be possible. Who knows. And friends of mine whose first kids are about A's age are either pregnant or starting to talk about that next child. And I feel like I should to.

And then I find myself exhausted. One more great day, with so much to do and see, and some tantrums to calm, but a lot of wrangling and not a lot of down time, and I'm spent. It is time to put that question away for now. Because I can't plan on another child at this moment. Even the thought of being pregnant while I have such an active kid and such a weak back, is daunting. I still need 95% of what I bring to any given day, to mother, but also to get to where A and I are enjoying each other. It isn't time yet for us. I think it is just time to enjoy our crazy, laughing, screaming, singing, kissing, kicking, talking kid full on a while longer. The second child question will have to wait.

For now. I think I've found a cute pattern that is within my reach...using a hole punch. Wait, where am I going to get a hole punch?

Screens and kids

2011-10-25T07:15:00.000-07:00

There is a post and many comments on it, on the NYTimes Motherlode blog recently, about keeping toddlers away from TV. So many different opinions, so many different experiences, and yet there is always this undertone, similar to that about natural childbirth, and breastfeeding, that if you aren't doing it, it is because you don't care enough. Your priorities just aren't in the right place.

http://parenting.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/20/the-real-problem-with-toddlers-and-tv/

For the issue of TV watching, there is this sense from some commenters that those parents who do let their 2 year olds watch TV or videos, they should stop using it as a cheap babysitter. And that since X study or Y report talks about how TV is harmful for kids, you shouldn't let them see it yet.

I was planning on writing this post this morning, before heading off to work, but A got croup last night. And as part of our shower-in-the-bathroom-off-her-room-as-humidifier campaign, A's bedroom floor got flooded. Even after her coughing spasm settled around midnight, and she was asleep again, I was constantly listening for the sound of her breathing. I was sleeping with the white noise off, with my ears as close to her head as possible. She'd keep rolling onto her back to sleep and every 10th breath would just not come. She'd stop breathing. I'd try not to freak out. She'd wiggle around and wheeze again. I'd wonder when we should go to the hospital. She'd stop breathing again, turn, and continue her wheezy sleep.

Luckily, we both got some sleep last night, so even though she wasn't off to school today, I wasn't a total wreck. It was kind of nice to hang out at home waiting for the doctor's appointment. She was a bit slower than usual but in a good mood. But I still needed to get ready. I gave her my iPhone to play some Fish School. And thought about the post I'd wanted to write.

Among our friends with 2 year olds here, there is a range of TV or video use with their kids. And I think that is perfectly ok. Turns out M and I have the ability to not use TV very much because we have a solid amount of daycare for A, and a babysitter, and some household help. This is a luxury. And one on a very fine line. Because one night of illness, and our precariously just-barely balanced lives get knocked on their asses. And the iPhone games and Sesame Street videos on You Tube whoosh right in. Because our kid is a firecracker. And because, unlike with social science and psychology research, this watching-or-not of a screen doesn't happen in a controlled setting. It isn't about playing with her or having her watch TV, with difference between the two. Life doesn't happen in a single-variable-changing situation. Sometimes it means the morning goes smoothly, for two, still tired parents. And we enjoy each other's company. And I imagine that there are a lot of people who have a lot less resources, and a lot more stress who are using TV or videos to maintain some sense of sanity.

I currently live in a country where everyone has health insurance regardless of a job. Where salaries can be good, and where we moved because our standard of living would rise, monetarily. There are many social supports for people here. My husband shares a lot of household, pet and child duties with me. And I get to choose TV or not when I have the cushion of sleep, and other safeguards (although that may not be today, given my inability to find the right words today). As soon as they are gone, iPhone is my wingman. As part of a loving, caring, calm household. As part of getting through a tough sick-day.

On a trip with three friends last weekend, we spent a lot of time retelling our children's birth stories, breastfeeding stories, parenting stories. We had each been given completely different experiences, and even different views of the same experiences. Each woman's body is so unique in terms of how it will or won't conceive, birth a child, lactate. And yet all the judgment gets brought down hard for only one of two options - right, and wrong. We don't respect people's bodies in context of their lives, or their parenting decisions in context of their messy, complex, multi-variable lives.

Research studies and real life family life are very different. It is a good thing to keep in mind.

24 minutes

2011-10-20T01:32:00.000-07:00

That is what my laptop battery says I have left. I'm at home, so I could plug it in, but I need to get going for the day, so it is a good inspiration to write something and go. I have a cold, first of the fall season, and although I'm grateful that I (and not A) am up coughing at night, I'm still a bit slow. How nice would it be to stay in bed all day!

But work things are starting to move slowly, in a nice direction, and I want to take advantage of that motivation. For my playground project, I just had a lovely lunch meeting yesterday with an architect who also works for an "accessible playgrounds in Switzerland" group, and she had great contacts and information and idea for me. It finally felt like this might become more than just something I surf the internet for, on my own. More than just reading playground blogs (there is more than one - that surprises you, doesn't it?), and searching on "cool playground", "natural playground" and "science playground." I also had a chat with an ed psych PhD student on the other campus last week, and we've decided to try to establish some sort of journal club or reading group for science education academics. Finally. Sometimes living in a new place bring too few of these kinds of life-giving, thirst-quenching encounters where you no longer think it is just you that isn't so happy with the status quo.

However, (oh look, now that I am just writing and not on Amazon.com anymore, I have 25 minutes left!) for now I have been in my pajamas, with warm socks on, the radiator turned up all the way, under a cozy flannel duvet cover, looking for knit toddler clothing patterns. I've sent some 8 e-book samples (the free excerpts) to my reader from Amazon.com, and I just hope that many of them have images of what patterns are inside. I'm looking to make a long vest or sleeveless tunic for A to go over all her long-sleeved tops. Why are there no baby undershirts? I just want this kid to have an extra layer for winter, and a long-sleeved t-shirt from Old Navy isn't cutting it on its own. But I find no baby tank tops or sleeveless onesies for an almost 2-year-old, not here not online in the Americas. My solution then, is to go for an outer layer for over all the long sleeves. Besides, they say that the nap room at school is really warm, so the kids sleep in their lightest layers. Bingo - just pop off that tunic and the Old Navy tshirt is ready for pajama service.

I spend a lot of time "windows" shopping on the internet. Ok, Mac OS X shopping. I don't by all that much, even if I do constantly "add to bag", all across the .com world. I'm finally buying from Etsy, but even there, I have some 50 items in my shopping cart, and only 2-3 actually purchased. I guess it lets me spend time in English-speaking internet space doing some shopping and that is comforting and familiar. Easy.

Ok, Kindle book samples, let's see what you've got for me.

Relaxing

2011-10-18T00:56:00.000-07:00

I waste my time by looking through Etsy and trying to come up with things to do with the various rooms in our apartment. Right now, I have orangey wood floors, white walls, that bed (only a headboard height set of shelves, and none of the decor around the bed), and a 3X3 version of this shelf

What I would really like is to make the space bright enough to get me through winter, but also able to cool down for summer months without A/C.

Unfortunately, I really like these pillows from Esty that don't seem to match that there red shelf so well....

Fall is here

2011-10-13T11:35:00.000-07:00

Fall and my new B&W "film" for my iPhone Hipstamatic app. And times when I'm going for longer dog walks again. Actually, the last few days have been really nice. And these photos are from some 8 days ago. The weather is back to giving us at least a bit of sun each day, and I've been through another "I'm depressed, no wait, it was PMS" episode. Regrettably, it peaked while M and I were at the restaurant I last ate the night I went into labor. So I was convinced it was depression back, with the first really rainy cold day, and all the memories of the 17 hours of labor. But, it wasn't, and I'm trying fish oil pills now to see if they might lessen the mood swings every months. No more sobbing in a restaurant bathroom for me, thanks.

And the apartment keeps coming more and more together, final touches on moving around furniture. One metal bookshelf I hadn't touched in over a year finally got re-arranged, and now I just need to find family photos to put up over our work area.

Here's to black and white photos being as morose as it gets for me this winter.

The park


The park in color

Spiders are everywhere when the fog rolls in.

Some street posts had webs in 4 directions, hanging from every available sign.

"The hill" - where we inch our way up each morning, stroller in front of us. Not a great trek for bad knees.

Steve Jobs and Sesame Street chickens

2011-10-06T01:57:00.000-07:00

How many hundreds, thousands of posts today are going to be about Steve Jobs? I just heard on NPR, probably 12 hours late, that he passed away. It was one of the few plug-inable devices in our house that is not an Apple product. And I'm sad. In a heavy way. It is 11amI guess these cases where a human being, despite being extremely influential and rich and able to try everything it takes to get well dies, still really get to me. No hiding behind "If only I had....., I'd have gotten better." No hope remains in these cases. Individuals with huge drive and ingenuity, and bank accounts, can't stop terminal illnesses, either. A Nobel Prize was given to a doctor who died just a few days before the awards were announced, and who had tired to cure his own illness with all the latest, newest research-informed treatments from within a research institution.

At the same time, it is the last gorgeous day of early fall today. And I need to get out of this house and into the sunlight. I have some photons to absorb, and a daughter to pick up in a few hours. So my legs are shaved one last time to wear a skirt, I've finished downloading the newest artist I've learned about from Sesame Street You Tube videos, Feist, and I'm off to the big wide world.

"1, 2, 3, 4,, chickens just back from the shore, 1, 2, 3, 4,....."

4am yoga

2011-10-03T19:53:00.000-07:00

It has been a while since I've been so present during the little, 15 minute yoga routine a physical therapist gave me for my back. I have yet to return to her for our last consult, 4 months overdue now, partially because I keep "falling off" the yoga horse and never seem to sustain a 2-week practice. And she said to call her once I'm doing the routine each day for 2 weeks.

I'll do it for 10 days straight, now after A goes to sleep (sometimes as quietly as possible in her room while she goes to sleep but only if she is no longer aware enough of her surroundings to pop up like a meerkat, glow-in-the-dark nuggi hanging in mid-air), and then on day 11 will just be too tired, or fall asleep while I'm getting her to sleep. And then one day missed turns into two, and then into a week.

At this point often I am still having enough events per day that could strain my back, that I do it. Last week, on a 10 day hiatus, the end of a soap foam massage at a spa saw me almost slip off the stone tablet I had been laying on and crap! Ow. Reset the clock, can't call the physiotherapist until I feel a bit better (definitely no yoga that night), and now I am on day 5 again.

But last night I was just tired. I hadn't gotten a nap. Instead, I'd been prepping for German class, which is still one of the more engaging activities in my week. Once the 11:45am drowsy wears off. The teacher is really good at using little games of socializing to get us writing and talking - yesterday it was "2 truths and 1 lie" and I managed to fool both people I was playing with. I have not, in fact, ever flown a plane for 30 minutes. I have, however, swum in the Amazon river, and almost knocked over Stephen Hawking.

So German class went by, and soon I was meeting my mother- and sister-in-law to pick up A at school, then found myself heading off for an hour's break into town so the three of them could interact. And then it was dinner, and bedtime routines and goodbyes and I just wanted to sleep as I was laying in a dark room, waiting for A to drift off.

Now it is 4:45am, and I have been awake for about an hour, and spent the last 45 minutes in the living room. Sitting in the dark, watching the lights of Zurich, eating some yogurt snack from the fridge. And generally unhappy that I was awake and seemingly not settling. So I did my yoga. It just takes 15 minutes, which although that can feel like a precious long time at 9pm, feels like nothing when you know you have at least 45 minutes before you have a hope of falling asleep again.

And it was the most present I have been in my yoga routine for, what, months? Maybe I've only felt that "there and only there, moving and stretching, breathing and not thinking about 100 other things" a few times in the 8 months I've been doing it. It was great. And then I'd notice how great it was, and bolstered by such a personal "win", start thinking of what I could do next during this awake 45 min. I'd write in my blog! And then, maybe tomorrow I'd make a few changes in my routine, in my interactions with M and it would be a great day. I'd get more work done, and oh I still haven't done X and Z! But, unlike most times, I managed to get back into that "present" of just breathing and stretching some 5 times. Which is rare for me.

Tack that onto actually feeling sunshine on my legs as I walked in town on my furlough yesterday afternoon, on a street I am usually pushing A's stroller down and not noticing much of anything subtle about myself, and having a chance to write for 15 minutes (with pauses and edits, even!) and I'm suddenly drowsy and calm.

Say what?

2011-09-30T04:03:00.000-07:00

Argh! I even had to retype the title because my German keyboard has z and y switched. It first said "Saz what?" Maybe that would be a better title for this entry, anyway.

It is Monday, midday, here in Europe. I came into work to have another fresh-faced go at the work thing, and made a point of going to my group's coffee hour, at the Physics cafeteria at 10:30am, even though I was going to have my first German class (in post-beginners' German) shortly afterwards. I went, it was quiet, with only 3 of us there, I tried to ask a few questions to liven things up, about people's weekends. A few more people came. Someone who had just been speaking with me in English switched to German. And so went the rest of the 30 min, as others came for coffee.

Oh, such good practice for you, to have to speak in German, someone might say. Up yours, I might reply. I am already a bit lonely at work. I spend a lot of time working on my own. No one seems interested in a journal club up here. I'm tired. And conversation isn't flowing as things stand, even in English.

Yes, that is a bit bitchy. In reality, though, I'm trying to participate in my group's activities, and to have to strain to listen in on conversations, to be the only woman whether 2 or 10 other groups members show up, when I might catch 20% of what is being said, only to realize that it is a private conversation that was marked early on by some quiet word or two that I missed, is not what makes a Monday easier. I kind of just wanted to move back to the US this morning around 11am.

Ironically, my German class was 50% women, with a talkative, very approachable female instructor, and I had a great 1 1-2 hours speaking German with people not from work. As long as I remember to get a sandwich or lunch just before class, I think this is going to go well. As for work, maybe I'll just start an online journal club.

Summer is officially over

2011-09-30T04:02:00.000-07:00

I just read the dooce.com post for yesterday. And there she is, writing about how seasonal affective disorder hits her every year at this time. Sad for no real reason, just sad. In September, around equinox. So I am putting in a photo I took last week, that I love the look and feel of, that no way in hell am I ever going to set as my desktop during any cold/grey months of the year.

There it is, end of summer, almost 8pm and the streetlights have just turned on.

No wonder. I have been extra vigilant with the am-I-depressed-again self assessments and even though it has been sunny most of last week, yesterday and the day before, I was in a mood. Sad, disappointed with work, unmotivated, add a pinch of bitchy. And had no idea why. And was hoping that it wasn't the call to medication again.

I think that living with depression feels like your strings are stretched a little more loosely than other people's. We zip through our day on these lines, and below us are happy fields and sad pools, and when you are depressed, your zipline just sags a bit, and your feet get caught in those pools, you slow down and then stay longer immersed in the pools. When I was on anti-depressants, my zipline was stretched tight. My feet didn't touch those pools, even when I passed them. They were there, I saw them, but my physical self didn't feel like it was caught in them.

Thank god for an ex-Mormon blogger with a good enough sense of humor and a depressive system to remind me that some of these downs are shared by many many people. There were some 60 comments on her post saying things like "Oh! I forgot about the seasonal change! No wonder I hate everything these last few days and don't know why I'm sad."

Perhaps this also explains my sudden interest in the Hipstamatic B&W expansion pack for my iPhone. Great photos, lovely focus on shape, and totally depressing. Rock on, subconscious!

In other news, L left back for home, so summer really IS over, but she left behind the coolest arrangement of 70% of our artwork on the dining room wall. We just went from no art, to most of our art being up and it feels more like home yet again.

I really don't care if you like me or not

2011-09-19T03:19:00.000-07:00

Lie. Of course I care. And this may be one of my biggest weaknesses when it comes to teaching effectively. I'm helping teach a course for new physics lab instructors, and the group of 7 male PhD students and postdocs look at me while I talk. Some of them don't, perhaps hoping I don't ask them a question.

But maybe they are just bored. Crap, look at that guy, who has been the most active participant so far, his eyes are rolling back into his head. I'm boring him! I'm boring them all! Quick, smile more, song and dance, why won't they smile and nod at me? Why won't you like me?!?

Wait time, out the window.

Skip some parts of my slides, because they probably think what I'm saying is too touchy feely. I don't give edicts, or rules, I'm just talking about building rapport with your students. Which, apparently, I suck at. Or do I? I have no idea.

I do know that it shouldn't be the point of my teaching, whether they like me or not. Because it leads to too many "right?" (smile, nod and hope they do too) moments. So what my last minute activities didn't fly, I've made notes to make them better next time. At least I stopped talking for a while and they got to do something.

The other thing that I have encountered again is the confusion over how to pitch this stuff. I'm the only woman in the room, I'm not a working scientist, and I don't believe in "I know better than you" presentations. And yet, people want to learn from masters, those who they feel are better at them at things. How do I strike a balance between getting them to buy into my expertise on these topics without having to pull an alpha roll on the audience with a flurry of my PhD letters and references and establishing dominance? How do you preach non-dominance without dominating a class full of male physicists to get their attention. Or anyone for that matter? Female physics professors, too. How do I challenge the cult of genius in a presentation when I worry that I have to convince the audience I'm a genius to listen to my presentation.

Foucault used to dream about writing an article anonymously so that people would read his ideas fresh, with no preconceptions about who was writing. And yet, to get people to publish it, to spend time reading it, he knew he would have to sign it. I may not be no Einstein, but maybe I'm a little bit Foucault.

Always wondering, not often saying it

2011-09-15T01:22:00.000-07:00

If this is not the first blog post of mine you have read, chances are you know already that I am fairly open about my depression, about anti-depressants, and issues surrounding both. And I stopped taking anti-depressants again, after almost a year, a few weeks ago.

Like the last time I did this, there was the feeling that life was way more bearable and stable, that enough things had changed in those 10-11 months, that it was time to try without the medication. And as last time, there was a tiny fear of taking off the training wheels I'd been happily tooling around with for almost a year. How would I feel? Would I start getting angry with A again? Would I start crying again? Would it have been a mistake, and maybe show me that I'll likely be on the medication from now on, at least until my daughter it a lot older?

I probably told 3-4 people that I went of the medication. I told M, my cousin, and a few friends here in Zurich, one of whom has gone through a lot of similar ups and downs as me. They are people I trust to know this, mostly because they have been the ones I didn't get the pity looks and the "ohhhh, you're still on the medication, huh? That's too bad..." vibes from whenever I spoke of how I was feeling. Just a suggestion, if you have a loved one who is on anti-depressants, and is speaking about it openly, not with shame (even more so for those who are ashamed of it), talking to them like this does not help. It isn't nice, it isn't kind, you're not really interested in their well-being if you haven't taken the time to realize how monumentally their struggle was before the drugs and how much better they feel now. So stop it. It is not that different from "ohhh, you're still single?" or "ohhh, you are still in that relationship you hate?" No matter how nice a tone a person tries to put on those statements, they are all, still, essentially, judgmental. They show your disappointment about something in the person's life.

Aaaaanyway, the withdrawl from the Cymbalta sucked. Lots of nausea, even now once every few days, out of the blue. A nasty 4 hours of stomach cramps, maybe. Other than that, I'd love to say I didn't notice any change, but there were small ones.

As I was boarding the plane to Copenhagen a few weeks ago, I could feel a little wave of sadness about something I had been thinking or reading, when I said "goodbye" before my trip to A, I cried, at the thought of something happening to me on the flights and not coming back, and every few days, I can feel the not-so-happy hormones surround my thoughts. It reminds me of the swings in the park. When A sits on them, her feet wave freely about, high above the gravel. When I sit on them, if I don't lift my legs, my feet drag in the gravel. Being on anti-depressants was like having shorter legs for a while - I didn't have to put in effort to lift myself out of the sad gravel, and pretty much every day my feet were clear of it.

So, for a few weeks, I've felt my long swingset legs come back, and that has been ok. Sure, I wish I was a more unflappable person, but my brain doesn't work that way. And it is the reason M and I always kiss goodbye when we part in the morning, because many years ago I was keenly aware of how fragile life is and I wanted to make sure we had a proper farewell. Every day. Now it is just habit, and a nice one, even if one or both of us it upset with the other.

Then a few days ago, Monday afternoon, I had to get A from daycare early because of a holiday, I had stupidly brought her big tricycle for the park but not thought about having to corral that and the stroller on the buses and trams, she was on day 5 of a nap-strike (which is now over, thank everything!), I hadn't napped, and I almost lost it, 5 minutes after pickup, on the way to the bus. I couldn't find M on the phone or text, and his building was locked (because of the holiday) so I couldn't leave one of the vehicles there, or even go cry in his office for 5 minutes.

Shit. Shitshitshitshit. I don't want to cry. Why do I feel like crying? Do I have to go back on the meds again so soon? Can I not even handle one messy 30 minutes? Shit. Don't cry! That's dumb, not actually crying doesn't mean I'm not depressed if I then spend all my energy trying not to cry. How will I know if I have to get on the meds again? What limit of shitty behavior or mood will I set this time? I don't want to wait too long? Oh, I'm so disappointed in all of this. Crap!

It passed. I went about the rest of the afternoon, lugging that tricycle around, and then catching A as she sped across the park and down the block, and it was tiring, but fine.

Last night I got my period.

Big, huge, loud sigh. A once a month, weepy afternoon, I can handle. I can learn to take more easily and gently. I can cancel all plans but those that help me out. It is probably not the depression again, after all. But from now on, now that I've realized that I might have this tendency long-term, now that I've been on medication twice, I'll always wonder.

(The image is a painting by Chris Bellamy. It is already sold, but if I weren't I would want to buy it. That is what it looks like to me when I walk in the forest without my glasses on.)

The coolest playground ever.

2011-09-14T07:06:00.000-07:00

Ok, maybe that is the wrong way to go about thinking about this project. It is definitely a title that will get me in trouble with hopes and expectations of mine. How do you design a playground?Nature is a great playground for kids. Places where kids can run and hide and find, and collect. Places where water from rain or a pump are made available, sand can be molded and shaped and collaborated around, shelters for parents and cubbies for toddlers. But then, I have books on my desk at work with pre-fabricated playground equipment that looks pretty cool and shows pieces that allow disabled kids to play, too. Because the kid at the farmer's market last Saturday, who just watched longingly at the two dinky swings and one see-saw, should have a chance to swing, too.

I have YouTube videos tagged that show great, crazy see-saws and spinning disks. I have websites marked where landscape designers' work is showcased and explained. Amsterdam and Berlin are apparently home to loads of funky playgrounds, with the tradition dating back to artists in postwar Europe. High risk areas encourage kids to decide on how to play, low risk areas placate us moms. And now let's try to make it a physics playground on top of it all. Yes, I know there is physics in every playground, but it isn't often part of the take-away message. How about some coupled swings? Or a see-saw where kids can lift two adults on a ski lift chair because the lever arm is so long.I'm torn, between sound focusing disks, merry-go-rounds attached to generators and see-saw water pumps in natural settings, and making the place extremely accessible to both strollers and wheelchairs. I realize these may not be mutually exclusive, but I sure could use a landscape designer to help me out. I want an inclined shade structurewith prisms and color filters embedded, and lots of little holes to project images of the sun (imagine going to a playground on purpose to watch the passage of a solar eclipse on the ground), and maybe contain time telling structures.

I want some underlying sense of scientific activity - encouraging observation and experimentation, even if there is no huge, parents vs. kids see-saw. And sculptures with a sense of humor and climbing/sliding functionality.

(by Tom Otterness, pretty much the look on many parents' faces at a playground and what kids love to see.)I guess I need to find some engineers who want in on the project, too. Engineers and landscape architects. Good thing I'm at a university with programs in both.

Date-night, Basel.

2011-09-13T02:06:00.000-07:00

We took our first sort-of out of town trip this time. A stayed with her babysitter and we went an hour away by train. That is currently the distance I can imagine both her parents being away. But that's just me.

In the end, we really didn't see much of Basel apart from a walk around the old town, which is a bit smaller and a good bit more charming than Zurich. What really got me was the sense that Basel's streets are more mixed-use than here. Here, you go to one neighborhood for funky stores in renovated lofts, another for the old town, another for restaurants, etc. There it seemed more like a bit of everything in the same place. And the university is much more integrated into the city. It seems. I may just be looking for something to hate on (it is raining and cold today, and, after all, I'm off anti-depressants).

We mostly just spent time at a fancy fancy hotel, relaxing. M got a massage on Sunday morning in the room while I spent an hour and a half on our balcony, doing the crossword, worrying about being bored, closing my eyes and listening to the river sounds, reading a Real Simple magazine I bought at the train station, thinking, remembering I was worried about being bored, and finally realizing that bored is luxurious when you have a toddler. Hallelujah.

And Saturday night, for the first time ever, we ate in a Michelin 2-star rated restaurant. Now, if a 7 course meal, where every course is some of the best food I've ever had, comes with the 2-star rating, I'm wondering what happens in a 3-star restaurant. Do the waiters skydive in? Do puppies get placed around your feet in a snuggly basket? Let's just say that it was a wonderful meal, and even though each course might be small - the one mussel and one beet macaroon, for instance - they were exquisite, and by the end we were full. Ah, right, the end. Dinner took 3 hours. Another luxury when you have kids. We sat on a warm to cool balcony, during sunset, overlooking the river, talking, closing our eyes and really tasting food, laughing at what seemed like 4 different dessert courses (not including the cheese!)....for 3 hours.

I'm sure Basel is a great place to visit. Next time we'll have to go to a museum or something.

Visual images in Vilnius, and beyond

2011-09-13T01:27:00.000-07:00

Why lie, indeed?

I don't like tagging. I find all that messy, dripping, look-how-many-times-I-can-spraypaint-my-symbol graffiti obnoxious. Like a muscle car with the bass turned way up, blasting through the neighborhood, but worse. They just parked the eyesore in one place and you have to keep seeing it.

I do like street art. I like modern art, too, I guess, and to me they go together. I like seeing what colors and shapes and humor and statements show up along the tracks into any European train station. I like the thought that goes into it.

I like seeing different languages and words on packaging in different places, too. Like the t-shirts that made so little sense it was almost like English language poetry in Japan. And this baking "soda" that my cousin bought to clean with in Vilnius.

And then the formally sanctioned art, like this street in Vilnius where different artists each made a plaque for a Lithuanian writer. I like seeing art in places other than just museums. I struggle a lot with what kind to buy and hang in my own apartment - meaning, I just put it all in my "shopping basket" on Etsy or E-bay or link to an artist's webpage and never click "buy" because I am so overwhelmed with the commitment.

But I do like street art, and during our trip, L reminded me of an artist (in London?) who cleaned off grime under bridges as his "paint" - he wasn't applying anything new to any walls, just cleaning swatches that made up his artwork. How great is that? Someone mentioned that there wasn't much street art in Vilnius, but we found it in little around-the-corner spots. I like the animal stickers a lot. They are sweet. I think they look cute, give a little life to the walls. This means, unfortunately, there is no need for L and I to secretly go back there and start making our own art with a box of baking soda, a bucket of water and some thin brillo pads. So much for my secret life as a graffiti artist.

The last photo is from home, from a new IKEA dresser I've used to create our fourth wall for the guestroom. Just around that unit is the great blue sofa, and it is now joined by one whole cabinet space for a visiting guest. It will be my canvas, in lieu of a true street art career. Like so many women before me and after me, I will be an off-the-street artist and try my hand at visual design inside the apartment. Each drawer or door holds the dog leashes, the baby hats, my or M's shoes, etc. We keep forgetting which is which. So I've bought white contact paper and will be making visual silhouettes to stick on each one as a quick reminder. So far, only the dog leash drawer is blessed with an idea for design. The baby hats, baby socks, baby shoes, swim things, shopping bags, baby jackets and our shoes spaces are all wanting for good icon ideas.

Don't date your students

2011-09-07T03:34:00.000-07:00

I'm working this week, again, on my slides for an upcoming lab TA training workshop I am helping to teach here. And I'm putting in something about the concept of the balance of power in a university science lab class or discussion section.

So I headed to the Google to find an image for power balance, and these "buy one and you will magically exercise better" bracelets were the main image that came up. Apparently the fine folks in their advertising department have had to retract some statements that have no scientific basis of fact. Oops.

This idea of talking about power differences, that students are graded by the TA, came up for me when I asked my colleagues if they ever mention, as was done at every session of TA training in Arizona, "and don't date your students." It is in MIT TA handbooks, it is all over American academic life. My colleagues found my inquiry amusing and I'm guessing it got filed away in that "those crazy, litigation-hungry Americans who don't know the subtlety of human interactions" file. After all, they figure this is not an issue for a workshop for TA's, adults that they are.

But I think it is. And not just the dating part, but the whole, messy, very subtle power issue. Yes, both TAs and students are adults, of a very similar age, in fact, and I think that this is part of the issue. It is hard to notice (unless someone sits you down and asks you to consider it, with examples from your own past), that although nothing about you has changed, you suddenly hold power over your students. You grade them. Period. That's it.

And I think that fact goes unnoticed and unexplored in too many academic situations. For those becoming TAs, or professors, they don't usually feel any different the day their power takes effect, compared with the previous day, and the comraderie of academia sets up some interesting situations. We all joke with each other, we are supposed to be suspicious of absolutes and 100% results, we lightheartedly throw around insults. And among peer, that is fine. But as soon as that crossed downward across a power difference, it isn't so fine anymore.

The fact that academic science also has a huge case of impostor syndrome, means that high-ranking individuals routinely say things like "and as anyone can see" or "I'm sure you all learned this in kindergarden" in a class or talk setting. But the people sitting in the audience see, not a peer, equally unsure of her or himself intellectually, but a professor who thinks that the previous 5 whiteboards crammed with equations were child's play. Problem.

There were two cases for me, one in the upstream and one in the downstream power differential, that really surprised me. They underlined how very subtle these issues can be. First, as an undergrad, woman in physics, I was in the minority in my physics labs. And one of my TA's, a semester later, asked me out. I was still in my "don't hurt anyone's feelings" phase of life, and although I didn't want to go out, I agreed. We went to Olive Garden, I realized as soon as we sat down to dinner how worried I was about the good night kiss expectation, and in the end I shook his hand really quickly in my dorm lobby and that was the extent of the date. But I also felt weird being asked. We weren't equals in my eyes, I had looked up to him as an instructor, and it made me question all of our interactions as student and TA the previous semester.

Then there was the time I was dating a musician. I thought he was very quick-witted, and intelligent. I used to get annoyed by things he said and call him a dork. So, I wasn't even calling him an idiot or moron. Maybe I already knew, unconsciously, that
that was off the table. But it turned out, even the name "dork" made him feel stupid. Because I was a graduate student in astronomy, he gave me the power to judge his intrinsic intelligence. I couldn't believe how seriously it made him feel dumb. I was the controller of his self-esteem as far as smarts went.

This second case made me much more aware of how our categories in life, and I'm sure the reporting structures, and evaluation structures, color our actions and words. They can give them meanings we don't. I imagine that most academics feel insecure enough about their ultimate intelligence that they would refuse to believe they can make someone feel dumb.

Tough. You have the power (and the higher salary, my friends), and with that comes both a higher responsibility, and the loss of your buddy-buddy days with everyone in academia. You can't be your students' pal. I'm sorry. And, sorry, but you have to watch what you say or do, more than they do. Sexual advances, jokes about intelligence, etc., all mean something different to any listener who you have grading, employment or other power over. I know you're disappointed that you didn't feel any more confident or smart, coming out of your successful thesis defense, or tenure hearing, but your role changed.

One plate at a time

2011-09-07T03:10:00.000-07:00

I like food. Even if on this trip I was less likely to be eating some of it, I was doing my very best. For some reason, every time L and I passed a food stand at the market where there was sauerkraut, I had to have some. No idea what caught my nose, but I did have more than one plate of it during the visit to Vilnius. Lithuanians tend to add sugar to it, and this makes it less sharp. Well, and sweeter, of course.

And there were the mushrooms, and the pork cutlets, the berry drinks and the dark bread with garlic and sour cream. There was a lovely bowl of borscht the first night, which I will be trying to reproduce at home tonight for dinner. M must have been quite intrigued as he unloaded the grocery bag last night: sour cream, bacon bits, potatoes, a lot of butter,....

There were apples fresh from family gardens, and chocolate which was a completely different creature from what used to be available in Lithuania. I was quite impressed by the plain dark stuff, given that my palette is, um, well trained to that substance these last few years. We ate little fried cheese dough balls dusted in sugar, and rye bread coconut snacks.

It was a fine eating experience.

Oh, and I was happy to find that even the coffee shop chain made pretty good lattes. C'mon, Switzerland, you really have to step it up. Starbucks probably needs to go, and you need to start a homegrown label here. Please? It would make things all the more lovely. Ok? You'll think about it? No, huh?

Urp.

2011-09-04T11:17:00.000-07:00

Turbulence soon overshadows the luxury of being able to sit in an exit row and not worry about buckling anyone's seat belt but my own. Guy next to me, perfectly capable of both buckling his seat belt and able to keep it buckled upon take off.

Hmmm. So is this nausea a combination effect? I haven't gotten air sick in many flights now, and on some I haven't taken any Dramamine. I wonder if stopping my antidepressants (as of a few days ago) has brought nausea back into my life. Granted, this is a bumpy flight but along with feeling more sensitive to the world of emotions, I seem to be more sensitive again to the world of inner ear imbalance.

(4 days later)

Yes, this is in fact a withdrawl symptom of the medication. Oi, oi, oi, being in a country where hospitality is underscored and threaded through and through with having guests eat, a lot, may not have been the best place to be to go through that. I was nauseous about 5-6 times a day, sometimes after eating something, sometimes when I was hungry, or in a car going down bumpy roads, or, in bed, lying still, and it just came over me. In retrospect, though, being on my own made it easier. I think a few relatives must have thought I was on a diet or something, but I ate when I could, and we all survived.

And my withdrawl side effects seem pretty mild compared to people who speak of "brain zaps" and other horrific-sounding things. Already today is starting to feel more stable.

I am home, back from Vilnius. When I download photos and have more than a minute to process the last 4 days, I'll write more. Let's just say it was a really nice trip and just set me up to be quite calm about going again, and looking forward to the opportunity.

Bored, gloriously bored, on a plane

2011-09-01T02:49:00.000-07:00

Last time I flew to lihtuania, the first and only time, was 1989. I was young, a junior in high school. Lithuania Was still under communist rule. 22 years ago. I still feel 25 years old sometimes so something being 22 years ago is hard to comprehend.

I was in high school, having just spent a year at a Lithuanian boarding school in germany, and L and I and her parents flew there from....whoa, Zurich. Ha ha, I hated Zurich that night I spent at some random, Lithuania Swiss
S family friends apartment. I had taken a train
From Germany to Zurich,
Spent the day in Zurich alone, trying not to spend too much money, eating fast food probably, drawing in my sketchbook by the lake, then taking some tram (that I probably know well now) to some other tram
(ditto),
To some street in some neighborhood I probably have friends in now. It was late by the time I got to looking for this lady's street, and I w
As tired and hungry and getting a bit overwhelmed. I was in tears, ones I kept trying to hide, as I reached her place after 15
Minutes of walking down the empty cold looking street the wrong way
Then the right way. My distress
Didn't even register to this, get this, retired child psychologist! That explains a few things about the Swiss and how they deal with mental health.

I accepted a yogurt and a banana from her and went to b
Ed as soon as I could. And woke up as soon as I could, showered fast, and fled to the Zurich airport, where I'm sitting now, typing this. Airports felt safe and familiar, no matter
What country they were in. A bit like catholic churches do to roman Catholics who may not speak the local language but can follow mass and find a kindred spirit if need be. In airports, even in the 80's, sometime was likely to Speak. Englsih, and I could just
Wait it out for L and her parents' flight from north America. InteRnational terminal, arrivals....even better. higher prwobability of English and even Americans.

Their flight wAs late by more than an hour, and soon, laughing, hugging, and on. Our way (me, finally with my pack), we flew to krakow Poland. Our flight to Lithuania had long since left Zurich, so it was the loooong way around for us. Poland, to moscow, sleeping on airport benches, realizing we we at
Te wrong one of 7 airports, my uncle practicing his probably no longer existent Russian oour cab driver whose car ceiling was falling on our head
S in the back seat. Lots of laugher. A quick stop at red square. Then long for something to Eat in a country that still didn't have much, and relizing the only stuff available was bread with lard spread. Or lard cookies. Lots of lard, as I remember.

Finally we made it, one tired, sweaty, huny, happy family bunch, to Vilnius.

And here I go again.

Trams and trip to airport in Zurich, no problem. On the plane to copenhagen, no problem. My freitag bag and a loudly clicking carryon (I see what you mean, M, we do have to get that sucker fixed), a job, a life, a husband, a kid,, a dog, and clothing I bought with money not from an allowance, check.

Last time i made this trip, we had huge suitcases, bringing all sorts of things other people had suggested our relatives in Lithuania could use - dollars, huge bottles of ibuprofen and aspirin, underwear, and a box of 400 dental fillings. Tis last item, still sealed, would apparently be used by the whole family within a week or two to go get all their dental work done. This time, I bring no gifts. I have no idea who I will see, from all 4 sides of my family (L and I share 2/4 grandparents, by definition, so we'll see our mothers families together, and I will try to meet someone from my dads dads side, leaving my dads moms side for next time). I don't have parents telling me what to bring, how to gift relatives, how to do any of this, and I have been worried about this part.

But I will be back. I will bring my husband and my little Lithuanian girl. And we will figure it all out.

Note: I wrote this on a plane and the spellcheck was apparently not on. Sorry.

Ha. Ha ha. Hahahahahahahahaaaaaa!

2011-08-30T03:42:00.000-07:00

A trip all by myself.

Well, no, not exactly. My cousin, L, will be there, too. But I'm going away. Without M and A and the dog. So it will count as "by myself" in some key ways. I will pack for only myself and plan to buy a few things when on travel. I might even just open a bag 30 minutes before I leave for the airport and throw in the first 20 things that come to mind. I'm sure my phone and some underpants will make the list. And a pair of shoes or boots. And, hell, I'll be wearing clothes at the time, and if I really want, I can wear them for the entire length of the trip. All 4 days.

Don't worry, L, I'm just kidding. At the very least, I'll shower each day and hang my clothes to air out overnight.

No packing diapers, or wipes. Or bottles. Or 6 pacifiers. Or dog treats, or extra anything, really. I'm giddy. I'm planning to sleep...WHENEVER I'M TIRED. Might even go wild and eat....when I'm hungry. I bet you I'll even get to finish what is on my plate without small beings trying to steal my food (I'm talking to you, A and pupper). I bet you L won't look at me, then at my plate, back at me, stretch out her hand and say "egg!"

I can't actually believe it is happening. The thought of being on my own for 4 days is amazing. What did I do before I had a kid? How did I actually fill the time? I wonder if I'll run out of ideas of what to do.

Doubt it.

For those of you channeling my subconscious which is a bit worried at how happy I seem to be at the thought of leaving my family, especially my baby girl, for a few days, take heart. I've realized I'm not yet ready for her to be without both parents. But since M will be here, as will her daycare, and her beloved babysitter, I plan to travel guilt-free on this one.

Better go charge up my Kindle. I've got some reading to catch up on.

Science (teaching) Friday

2011-08-26T00:24:00.000-07:00

Its not like we even get these NPR programs here at the correct time of week or day - Science Friday is being broadcast when it is already Friday night here. But I've been working on a physics lab TA training seminar this week, and I found an article I really like. It is a collaboration between chemistry and English professors at Seattle University (Alaimo et. al, 2009), and the topic is helping college students learn to write like scientists. Basically, they argue that writing like a scientist (and I'd add speaking like one) goes hand in hand with thinking like a scientist. The motivation for the paper is the difficulty the chemists saw their students having writing up a professional looking senior thesis in chemistry, even thought these students had done many lab courses and had to write up reports for them.

If you've taken a science lab class, chances are you know that lab reports are a weird little genre unto themselves, having little or nothing to do with actual scientific writing of the kind that goes into journal articles. The authors make a great point about this that is obvious once they've stated it - students who learn to write lab reports are learning to write for a totally different purpose than what a research article has. The audience is the TA who will grade the work, the data and experiments are preselected, there is almost no gathering of multiple instances of the same data, and, let's be honest, almost all unexpected results are chalked up to "human error" and not really explained by the students. So why should we be surprised that students who know how to write a lab report have no idea how to write like scientists?

The authors discuss how they redesigned a yearlong chemistry lab course to mirror actual science data acquisition, analysis, and writeup. And they start with the easiest (e.g. lowest Bloom's taxonomy level) cognitive tasks like writing up the data results and analysis, followed by the harder (higher level) cognitive tasks like the discussion and introduction. They spend time on issues of audience (a person with similar or slightly less chemistry knowledge than you, the student), and purpose of these different sections.

Sounds like a great idea to me.

In control

2011-08-25T03:02:00.000-07:00

I'm a control lover. I don't know that I'd go as far as calling myself a control freak (although M might, at times), but I like to plan. Especially for trips. I like the feeling that if I just pack the right things, everything will go well. I am the person you want to have on your Eurail trip, or vacation in Costa Rica or Ghana. I'm the one who brings tiny mosquito nets, and Cipro (for, um, traveller's, um, food related illnesses), and Ibuprofen, and sunburn cream, and sea sickness pills, and extra ziploc baggies for stuff, and a lock for your huge ass backpack. And cards, and a small pair of binoculars, and a camera with a waterproof case for underwater photos, and extra batteries.

And, you get it.

With the arrival of baby A, and her who-knows-what-it-was sleeping problems almost 2 years ago, I turned these skills onto managing her environment. It didn't work, but it gave me something to obsess about, and make myself calmer.

She has now had 3 chest infections in the last few months, complete with horribly constricted airways that make her wheeze and breathe hard. And after bout number 3, I sit here at the computer, with baby Singulair in an unopened box. The pediatrician has suggested it, and said emphatically how it has no side-effects. And I chose it instead of an inhaler with spacer that she'd have to learn to take 5 deep breaths from. Last night, before opening the box, I went....yes, online.

I know. Dumb. But it is one of those basic-good-parenting things, where at least I want to see what side effects are written on the drug's website for this stuff she is supposed to take all winter long once a day. And even the pharmacist said only that it might make her a bit drowsy (so I was thinking, "Score!"). Let's just let the website speak for itself:

"SINGULAIR may cause serious side effects. Behavior and mood-related changes have been reported: agitation including aggressive behavior or hostility, bad or vivid dreams, depression, disorientation (confusion), feeling anxious, hallucinations (seeing or hearing things that are not really there), irritability, restlessness, sleepwalking, suicidal thoughts and actions (including suicide), tremor, and trouble sleeping. Tell your healthcare provider right away if you have, or your child has, any of these symptoms while taking SINGULAIR."

You have got to be kidding me! Aggression and hostility and sleepwalking?! I mean, ok, now I've also gone to the forums and heard from parents whose kids have night terrors from the stuff. But how am I supposed to know if they are from her medication or would have happened anyway? Depression? Ai, ai, ai.

The package sits, still unopened, on my desk. Between this keyboard and the screen. And I'm thinking that the inhaler isn't sounding so bad anymore. I think that for a kid who is already excitable, and who is going through the tantrum stage, while we are also trying to adjust, and already screams in the middle of the night, and who I've suspected might sleepwalk someday based on how she wakes from sleep,....this medication will have to be the only option for me to start her on it.

So this is one of those cases in which I can control. But if I couldn't, as I've realized will be the case with any future pregnancies and birth defects, or behavior disorders (let's just say that the NYTimes Motherlode blog has been going all out on posts about all sorts of scary things), those are the situations I start to get nervous. Maybe, if we decide to have another child, we should adopt. How horrible a thought is that, to adopt to avoid birth defects. What if we have a kid who says he/she wants to kill us, at age 5? There was a post on Motherlode about this, too. Granted, the follow-up from the mother calmed me down.

Even though my brain can imagine a kid with all the possible problems all at once, nature probably cannot, and it is only in my upper-middle-class existence that I even have the luxury of pretending that any of life is predictable. That serious illness won't strike, since we can afford medication when A's breathing gets hard or my depression sets in. That it is worth planning for 10 years from now since we can assume we will all be around. That life can't suddenly get turned upside down. I forget sometimes that it already has, two years ago, and that it sucked, it was hard, I hated being in the middle of all of it, but, that in the end, we all survived.

Time to get some predictable work done, in my predictable Thursday, with my predictably sleepy dog.

Pish time on the iPone

2011-08-24T07:37:00.000-07:00

A likes my iPhone. Actually, she calls it my "ipone," on which her favorite toddler game right now is Fish School (which she calls "pish!"). We used it in Mallorca and then Milan in the car to help get over tired, cranky times. And on the trams or buses here, to help get over tired, cranky time. Or at a restaurant, to keep her at the table for more than 2 minutes when shes...you guessed it, tired, bored or cranky. That is correct, I use an iPhone as a babysitter for 5, or even 10, minutes!

But as tired and cranky time seems to be getting longer, and more enthusiastically cranky (ok, let's just say tantrum), I went back into child raising literature and found an idea that is working really nicely. In the book, the example was actually about an 8 year old girl and computer time, but it works with our little one, too. The concept that lack of structure is frustrating translates to A asking for "pish" almost anytime she realizes she is bored, and my having to decided on an instance-by-instance basis whether I say yes or no. If I say no, she protests. A lot. Loudly. And I was really sick of having to decide based on some unknown rules, or make some up, constantly. Anyway, the book suggests to schedule in an activity like this, and for us it has coincided very nicely with helping A get ready to leave the house in the mornings. We are trying to give her more structure to help ease tantrums, and now, 5 minutes before Mama or Papa are leaving to take her to school, she gets to play on the iPhone. She has to have her shoes and sweater on, or at least allow them to be put on, and be in her stroller. And after the first 2 days of toddler protest with the taking the iPhone away when the stroller is leaving the apartment with said parent, today she was fine with it. Now she knows there is a time for "pish" and we get a more cooperative little person, ready to leave for school.

All around win.

By the way, the app is called Fish School, from a company called DuckDuckMoose, and so far I love all their apps. Especially the music and sounds - I have yet to want to throw the phone across any large distance after hearing the same song 50 times. Well done, DuckDuckMoose.

Autumn is on its way

2011-08-23T04:03:00.001-07:00

,
This is a strange concept for me, that it could start to get cold in late August. That decade, plus, in Tucson completely reset my internal sense of seasons. It should be over 100 F from May through October, as far as my body is concerned.

Mix this with a healthy dose of already being acclimated to cool-ish summer temperatures in a country where air conditioning in residences is rare, and I can't wait for this week's 90 F and sunny to end at the same time as I am horrified by the forecast for rain and 65 F by weekend. I think I may only like 73.5 F and partly cloudy for weeks on end right now.

Anyway, the windows and curtains and metal shutters are all closed throughout the apartment since 10:30am this morning, in hopes that the heat won't make it in the rooms very far by the time we get home from the river, and then they'll open briefly until dusk, close again for mosquito feeding hour, which is also known as "Let's go eat M to a pulp" and the night.

A's water toys are packed, as are her swim diapers, and some snacks, for our almost daily trip to the river. The water is a glorious 77 F, and clear greenish-blue. The current isn't too fast, but it makes you feel like you're swimming in something thicker than water, half-set jello according to my friend I. There are shade trees and toddlers and everything you need to spend 4-5 hours escaping the heat.

I've stopped taking many photos recently, somehow there is just too much life to live and not enough time to even take out the iPhone, so let me finish with a few scenes from our trip a few weeks ago to Milan. Fish, street art (commissioned and not), and design were big themes on this trip.

We stayed in yet another AirBnb great find, an apartment where the owners had twins, so we had everything we needed for the stay - didn't even bring a stroller. Which is the height of travel-with-toddler ease, let me tell you. And the apartment was near the biggest green space in the city, with four off-leash dog parks for the dog (who came with), something she hasn't seen since we moved to Zurich. They don't do dog parks here. We followed most of the latest NYTimes "36 Hours in Milan" guide, which provided equal parts great food and gelato, and design museums and other such destinations. All who went had a great time. Ok, except maybe the rental car that got us there and back and got hit in the lot it sat in the whole rest of the time. In true name-your-favorite-stereotype fashion, the lot attendant had no idea how that could have happened, even though we had left it parked for him in the middle of the crowded lot and it was parked in a space when we picked it up.

I'm not 5 minutes late

2011-08-11T02:38:00.001-07:00

Turns out, I was 6 days 23 hours and 55 minutes early for the meeting. And had just made the 30 minutes trip into town. Well, ok, the 35 minutes trip, which I keep rounding off to 30 minutes, which is why I keep being late.

Late, then early, then without my wallet which means I couldn't fit in some 2nd hand baby clothes shopping of grocery store stop to try and salvage my trip. Because, of course, time cannot be wasted. Which is the true point of an iPhone. You can be productive, or at least active (I'm rarely that productive unless I'm using the Hipstamatic app) at all times. If you have your phone with you, and today I did have at least that.

So let's just ay that the pupper got to practice relaxing in her crate for an hour, I got to window shop and put some shoes and pants on hold for A, and then I scanned the comments on a friend's Facebook request for books to read. Just so happens, I also had my Kindle with me, so I used some 5 minutes downloading samples of books that people recommended to her.

Whew. Thank goodness I had all my technology with me, or I might have been a rotting, smelly, worthless drain on all that is important about humanity.

Now I'm home, I've fielded a work call, and I've taken off my boots and socks to let my toes drink in the gloriously warm, sunny day that our balcony finally has access to. Our sun shade was stuck in the open position for the last 2 months, and when the motor was finally replaced last week, you could almost hear the plants screaming "Gah!! What IS that?! I thought we lived in Seatlle?!" The zucchini plant seemed to shudder and realize that it might just have to overproduce some squash for us after all.

Whiny voices are on my mind this morning. A is a bit sick, which meant she was restless last night and that M and I got less sleep than we could have used. And this morning I, being the master of appropriate timing, thought I should stop responding to her whiny reactions. While she's sick. M gently mentioned it might not be the best time. I gently, inwardly, agreed and proceeded to keep asking A what she wanted, to tell me in words. Time to go digging in the child rearing books again for some suggestions on how to do this consistently and nicely. I have to say, that after letting A cry a bit when I didn't try guessing what blue thing (that was not in sight) she wanted, holding her, telling her I'd like to know what she wanted, letting her have some space, not letting her hit me, though,....she finally piped up in her tiny voice...."nuggi." Pacifier.

I jumped to my feet, A in arms, smiling, and said "You bet! Let's go find it. I'd love to find it. I really just wanted to know what you wanted!" and we went in search. So, she can do it. And when I have patience, I can encourage her to do it. And it may take 5 minutes of tantrum, but if it leads to a verbal request, I am so there for her.

Now if I can just get her to wear a bib and sit a bit longer at the table......

Other people's sad

2011-08-05T03:54:00.001-07:00

I'm still thinking about the encounter with the neighbor moving out. It hits a particular part of my personality, the one where I think (1) I should somehow share in another person's sadness, (2) that I can handle it better than they can and so (3) by sharing it I can take some of it away. Okay, now that I've written that poorly worded sentence, there is a sense in which I think it is true. That sharing sadness helps others. But my brain takes is a little (too) farther, in thinking I can take on the person's sadness for them.

I've felt this about a lot of adults in my life, especially when I was younger - that I could bear their sadness more easily than they could. Really? Seriously? That's one I need to practice not believing. As if my own life doesn't have its own sadnesses for me to deal with. I somehow forget all that I've been through with A and living in a new place and M and the dog and my depression, and think that somehow I should have had time and energy for this other person, while I was busy trying to keep myself above water. Or for this other person's sad. To take it on on top of my own.

And it leads to a nasty side-effect, that I am uncomfortable sitting with someone, in silence, and just being there, letting them have their sadness. Or, at least, I'm not good at doing that. And in the end, that is what I regret most about Tuesday morning with the neighbor. I quickly jumped in when she said she was going to a home, that it might be easier, to have all that help. And she agreed. Because, as her daughters told me later, she's a brave woman. But I wish what I had been able to do for her, and which I was able to do with her daughters later, was to ask how she felt about the move. And to let her tell me.

Because not broaching a topic, that both people in a conversation kind of know the answer to, doesn't make it disappear, or become a non-issue. It is still there. That sadness, the nervousness about a new place after living here 30 years (also learned from her daughters). All the ways I might have actually made the connection I was so regretting having missed with her, had I just listened, and asked, and not pretended that all was okay so we could smile together.

I can't take on another person's sadness. But I can just sit and listen and let them be sad.

(Note: I realize this neighbor might not have been all that sad, but I've mixed together two topics here - my lost opportunity to connect with her and my tendency to want to take on other people's sadness).

I do, however, need to learn more about how to do that last part with boundaries. Because part of the difficulty I have is that I drown in other people's sadness. It overtakes me, again, maybe because I think (mistakenly) that if I can just feel sad enough for them, they won't have to? I'm not sure, but it makes me very cautious about interactions with people who are sad. That said, not everyone, but some people, who have a lot of sad, constantly, in their lives. Or who feel and project a lot of it. It overwhelms me to the point I feel like I can't breathe. And that just doesn't work, now does it?

Lots and lots of rich, lush, glorious photos...and I have no idea how to make paragraphs that match photos!

2011-08-05T00:59:00.000-07:00

Time for some photos. Of Mallorca, which, outside the city of Palma, and near the lovely town of Pollenca, was really relaxing and family friendly. We rented a house, for me, A, her aunt L, and her Bobute (my mom). We rented a car. There was a pool, visiting cats, nearby miniature horses to visit every day, country quiet and stars at night, and a 10 min ride to the town.
M had a conference in the US, so it was three women vs. one very excited and attracted to water Beibis (that's A). It was an even match. First order of business on the trip was to change into a newly arrived purple pajama and check about size restrictions for overhead luggage. Luckily, I think A forgot about the overhead thing once we'd boarded the plane so I didn't have to forbid her from riding in the bin.

A week with very few toys, and no playgrounds. And it went...just fine.
Each morning, no matter if she got to bed at 8:30pm or 11pm, A woke up at 7:30am. Ungh. We'd climb out of our beds, wander into the kitchen, open all the windows, put on some coffee, grab a yogurt from the fridge and head into the backyard. The baby chair wasn't all that stable against a pushy, flicky leg toddler, but we had some great conversations about what exactly was the table (where feet are not allowed) and what was the chair (where, on the usual parental, last-second decision in favor of peace and a chance in hell of actually making some coffee, I decided was ok).

Seafood was on many menus. It was all over this restaurant's menu, in fact. Monkfish, lobster, cuttlefish (sorry smart animal I didn't really like the taste of!), fish, more fish, clams, and fish.

The streets of many towns in the Northwest part of the island were preparing for a festival, and thin strips of flags fluttered above many of them.
There was a jacuzzi with the pool. Not a hot tub, really, since the water wasn't heated. But a great place, 5 feet above the pool level, to try escaping from.
We spent the whole day at this cove. With a rented beach umbrella space and chairs, snorkelling, swimming, eating, napping, and sifting through all sorts of shells, sea glass and rocks.

Ah, the pool.
Someone had a great time running around and around and around the post box near the placa where we were having dinner. Enclosed public spaces, where parents can sit and eat, and kids can run around, were one of the things that made this trip so toddler friendly.

Aunt L and A skip down the streets of Alcudia, new bags in hand. Or, arm.

The neighbor I wish I'd gotten to know

2011-08-03T00:19:00.000-07:00

I was lying down for a 45 min nap, just after M and A had gone off to school, and the bell rang. Crap. Was the cleaning lady here super early? Dog walker? No, he doesn't have the house key and the ring was from our apartment door. There was our neighbor, a sweet woman of about 85 or 90, who lost her husband some 5 months ago, saying "Goodbye" and that she is moving to an assisted living facility, where she won't have to cook and clean by herself anymore. She speaks good English, she gave us a pajama present when A was born, she broke her hip and has been walking more and better every day with physical therapists. I think she and her husband lived in Canada and in Singapore for some time. I have always been meaning to invite her for a tea or coffee, to hear her stories, to ask about her life. And then it always seems I'm rushing, to get some work or errands in, and if A is around, she is sick. And I've been scared to pass that on to a woman who doesn't need a cold or chest infection, and for sure not the flu's we've had.

But I feel sad. Like I let her down. There goes my feeling that I am supposed to make others happier. I feel sad that we didn't have a coffee together once a week, just for a little chat. What could I have learned from her? What could I have given?

Sigh. No more napping. The weight of the missed opportunity, especially with a woman who reminds me of my late godmother, is too big. It is a rainy, warm day, and I guess I'll just be sad. And remind myself that I also romanticize other people's hardships. They must be sad, or needing my help, it must be tragic. But that isn't necessarily the case. She has children and grandchildren. She had visitors. I wouldn't have filled in for a lost husband or made her younger.

I just wish it was a bit easier to know the neighbors here. And I'm too good at going along with the custom of not interacting much. This is a case where I wish my American-ness had come forward a bit more.

Hmm.

Are scientists born or made?

2011-07-13T00:22:00.000-07:00

I'm in at work early again, since for the last 2 weeks M and I have switched who takes the little one in to daycare. He gets some blessed moments of silence at home, and I get to work with time to spare. It works best if, like last night, we all get a lot of sleep and I am not in need of my morning nap to think clearly. And somehow, even though the night started of warm (80 F) and by midnight there was a crazy hail and lightning storm ripping through the neighborhood, we all slept pretty well. Ok, not the dog. Thunder and lightning make her forget she needs an invitation up on our bed and she pretty much just thinks "Sorry, guys, but I've got to come smush against you to get through this." So even with a dog in the bed, we all slept until 8am. Giving us 30 minutes to dress, eat, and get out to daycare. Luckily, I took a shower last night.

So here I am, in a dark, quiet office. Rainy, cool day. Trying to put down a few more thoughts about academia before I forget.

This came up during the workshop I did, not on a slide, or maybe it was. Anyway, it is another offshoot of my study, something that struck me towards the end of analysis, in conversation with M and others and my data. The idea of intelligence as fixed and hereditary instead of learned and fluid closely follows the notion of whether a great astronomer is born or made. I think the view of a department (as a unit and as a collection of people) on this question will dictate its policies and how the program is structured. Even how student success/failure in coursework, research or communication is interpreted.

If great astronomers are born (=intelligence is fixed, hereditary), then the job of the department is to find those who are born astronomers. The focus is on weeding out the non-astronomers from the chosen few. The assumption may also be that a true astronomer can be recognized by her/his grades, recommendation letters, GRE scores, and undergraduate institute of origin during the admissions process. In classes, if the material is "too easy" then "we let everyone in" or "we dumb down the process" and non-meant-to-be's also survive. There is research on academic mathematics grad programs that has looked at these attitudes. The notion of a "weed out" course should be common, and accepted by instructors and students. Failure of a student can be attributed to "not meant to be an astronomer" status, and quality of mentoring is largely of the hook. If you have a good mentor, great, but if you don't, that shouldn't stop a real astronomer from graduating and getting a good position. Nothing should stand in the way of

My dirty little secrets

2011-07-04T03:10:00.000-07:00

Guess what? I have a cleaning lady. In the colloquial sense of that phrase, not like I own a human being who sleeps under the couch.

It has taken me quite some time to get used to the idea of having help cleaning house, even back when I was finishing my dissertation full time, or when A started going to daycare. But I'm finally learning how much it helps to have help with the house. I still do the shopping, and recycling, and M and I split the laundry. I cook most nights, dinners that I'm happy to put in front of A. But I rarely do dishes anymore, or clean the floors (which run rampant with dog hairs, but not, due to the dog's tongue, rampant with food around the highchair). Or the bathroom.

About 2 months after we moved here, we hired a cleaning service to come every two weeks. M would have started right on in at every week, but it took him some time to convince me. Yes, my husband advocated not only for cleaning help, but also any other help we need. He's really good that way.

Now, wonderful S, from Montenegro, with whom I speak broken German, comes for a full apartment cleaning once a week, and a few other mornings a week, just for an hour, to do the kitchen and then anything else if there is time. Do you know how wonderful it feels to walk into my bedroom and see the bed made with fresh sheets? I hope I'm not sounding like I'm bragging. If we couldn't afford the help, life would get so much more hectic and tiring. I'm telling you, for those of you who have maybe thought about getting the help, that it is one of the best things our money goes to. I would give up many other things I spend money on before this one. It gives breathing room to our family, and joy.

It means I can spend the extra time getting work done but also still keeping up with the bills and my yoga routine for my back. I can take care of myself enough to have energy for A. Which counts a lot.

Anyway, I thought I'd write about this today, because I think having cleaning help is still somehow taboo in American culture, and women feel like if they aren't completely overwhelmed, they have no right to hire someone to help. So, we have doggie daycare 3x a week, child daycare half time, I work half time, M works full time, we have cleaning help 3 days a week, I order groceries online to be delivered, and we have a babysitter we use for a night out or sending A for an overnight every few weeks, just to stay sane.

Oh, and S is the first person I've actually wanted to learn more German for. Not a local, but for the woman who takes such lovely care of our apartment, and even arranges the dog bed, I've wanted to be able to ask her more about her day, and to communicate better. And in fact, the new words I've learned in German were things like "leave", and others related to the household.

Wow, that sucker is big

2011-06-28T04:08:00.001-07:00

My thesis. In the required double-spaced format, that thing is 460 pages long. Too big, in fact.

I'm reading through the introduction again, for the first time in over a year, and I like it. I wouldn't say the organization is the best, but the writing flows - something I really pay attention to in others' writing, and try to emulate. And there are a lot of good ideas in there, from:

me, my experiences and thoughts, but all built on the work of others...

(1) the literature on academic speaking (Karen Tracy has done a lot of work on the goals of a colloquium in a communications department, and how conflicts between individual goals and institutional goals clash),

(2) studies of the culture of high-energy physics (Sharon Traweek),

(3) research on beliefs about intelligence (Carol S. Dweck - praising kids, and I think by extension people, for their hard work vs for their smarts, to achieve a score on an exam makes a HUGE difference in how they approach future tests, goals, challenges. Note: Praising for effort is the one you want to concentrate on. Praising for smarts can make them scared of challenges and of trying too hard),

and a lot of other smaller studies. A personal favorite I'd forgotten about is the idea of whether a great scientist is born or made. The beliefs of an academic community about this issue will drive all aspects of graduate student training.

If a great scientist is born, then the grad admissions process is key, because the point is to find the great minds, the future geniuses, and put enough barriers in place to keep out the ones who aren't supposed to make it. Who doesn't make it into or through graduate school is just a measure of who wasn't meant to be a scientist - it is the individual's fitness or lack thereof to blame.

If a great scientist is made, then it is the training that students get once in the program that counts. Are all the skills that one needs to do great science being taught? To all students? Explicitly? What are the official courses in the department? Are writing and speaking (which can make a big deal in hiring decisions) being explicitly taught and mentored, or is this falling to whoever a student's advisor happens to be. If students don't make it, it is the fault of the program.

Yes, those two options are pretty extreme, and there is likely a mixture of causes of student attrition, but I feel like academic departments and their employees often act much more like great scientists are born, and there is a sense that if they become nicer, or give more mentoring on things like how to ask a good question at a talk, or how to navigate the politics of the field, there is a danger of dumbing down the process. Oh my, who might make it through the gauntlet if we told all students everything explicitly?

So I'm sitting here in the middle, ok beginning, of a huge document I've written and forgotten the details of, trying to pull out some things for tomorrow's workshop. Still not sure where to focus, but there is a lot to think about in the next 24+ hours.

Entitled to understand

2011-06-27T00:45:00.000-07:00

Ok, today this is officially a space for me to think through this workshop. I need some questions to ask my audience, to get us all thinking about these topics.

In interview data gathering, it is always a better idea to ask open-ended, or at least not Yes/No questions. I'm guessing the same applies for a good question to ask a group that you want to get talking. And let's try them out on whoever is reading this right now and can leave a comment:

(1) Name an event or setting in your field where you rarely or never talk/ask questions.

(2) Name an event or setting in which you do ask questions or talk.

Hmm. I've already re-structured both of those questions a few times. This is good practice to figure out exactly what my point is.

(3) Name an event or setting outside of work/school where you are very comfortable talking or asking questions.

So what is my point with these questions? First go leave a comment with your answer for the three, if you please would.

I'm guessing that for the first question, there will be a lot of standard, departmental and conference settings. Which is the problem - there is something in the structure of these events that hinders easy and comfortable participation. This is a good time to add that, in my study, I assume that for the most part, the people attending these events in departments (morning coffees, journal clubs, colloquia) are well meaning. The faculty (at least in my interviews) say they want students to speak up more, and the students say they want to speak up more. And personally, in counselling, I've found this assumption to get me a lot further towards being happy and having healthier relationships, than assuming that someone is evil or trying to make my life hell on purpose. People have their own shit and that shit sometimes hits us in the face on accident, as they are spinning wildly, dealing with their own issues. Like that secretary I probably freaked out a few posts ago. Assuming she was scared instead of evil means I get to drop the issue and stop dwelling on her dark mark on this Earth.

Anyway, I assume everyone is well-intentioned, and that they all do want students to speak up more. Then I'm free to see what is standing in the way. Because there are other events, maybe a great mentor's office hours, or with friends in a study group, where students are speaking about science. And in the absence of even these few patches of hope (for me, there was a GR professor's office hours and studying with my friend A), there is hopefully at least one place in life where each person feels comfortable speaking. With a best friend or spouse, a parent, a stranger on a flight, a child.

I wonder if I should ask for them to list many events where they are uncomfortable speaking, and comfortable speaking? To make discussion more lively? Ooh, I know. Let's start really fun - tell me about the worst event you've ever seen/attended for speaking up.

These are the kinds of stories, part gossip and horror, that can help highlight the extreme version of unhelpful structures. Like the secret journal club, held without a group leader's knowledge, because the official event was so horribly demeaning.

Not only is gossip good to get the discussion flowing, turns out gossip and ridicule are key cultural norm delineators and enforces. What someone makes fun of about another person's behavior (if it is a joke that the group approves of, laughs at) communicates what that group holds to be a breach of proper conduct.

So, I'll start with some version of these 3 questions, have people write them down, we'll list them on a board or overhead, and then I'll talk a bit about research on speaking in academic settings, and we'll finish up by looking at the structures of the speaking-friendly events and see if we can't redesign some of the unfriendly events with that info. For instance, saving intellectual face is an important part of academic speaking, so instead of telling students there is no such thing as a stupid question, you might see how much they are worried about this issue by giving out index cards for people to write their questions on anonymously at a colloquium, and then collecting and asking a few of the speaker. Because we have all probably had a question, been worried it was too stupid to ask, and then seen a more senior member of the audience ask it.

Let me give an example of a place I've felt comfortable speaking up - a dance performance troupe practice. A group of us are going up in front of an audience, and we all need to, want to, look good. If you don't ask your questions, you're not going to get things right. There is a product you are aiming to produce and you'd rather be seen as not knowing something in practice than on stage. People feel entitled to understand in that kind of setting.

Entitled to understand. Crazy notion if you apply it to graduate students in a colloquium audience, eh? This is another aspect of a culture, whether it holds the speaker or the listener as responsible for the listener's understanding. A subset of this is in humor - is the joke teller or the joke hearer responsible for "getting" the joke? This will influence how subtle or explicit a joke is in a given culture. So back to the academic setting, a group of people leave the room after a talk, many of them having not understood most of the talk. Whose fault is this? The answer is somewhat determined by the culture's stance - should the speaker have done a better job explaining or should the listeners have tried harder and known more in order to understand better?

Speaking in academic settings

2011-06-26T05:26:00.001-07:00

Roughly, this was what my PhD dissertation was about - speaking. The specifics:

(1) in an astronomy department,

(2) in academic events (not talks for the public),

(3) in events where a grad student could potentially speak (by giving a talk, presenting an idea, or asking a question),

(4) as reported by graduate students and faculty members, when I interviewed them about speaking events.

It was a qualitative study, which means I asked, listened, recorded, transcribed, read and analyzed a whole lot of words. Over and over, as far as reading and analyzing goes.

I started the whole study thinking it would be about gender issues in astronomy, and inspired by a single question, asked in a women's group meeting in an astronomy department.

Q: "Why it is so hard for me to ask a question?"

Soon, my focus shifted to anyone (not just women) asking questions, then speaking in general, to other academics. My way-too-simple answer to above question?

A: "Because it is a hard (complicated) task to ask the right question. Or say the right thing. Or present in the right way."

It is hard for the woman who asked that question, because it is complex. Not because she is defective. It is complex for a number of reasons.

First, because of the ambiguity of vocabulary - asking a question can mean either having a question (as in "I don't get what you just said"), or coming up with a question (a multi-step process that requires a lot of practice and knowledge of the audience as well as the speaker). Everybody who sits in an academic talk audience has questions. Things they didn't understand or see or remember. Having questions is easy. A piece of cake.

Coming up with a question, the kind that takes into account what other members of the audience might also find interesting (be they graduate students who were unlikely to get some subtle point made by a speaking in your field that you wish to clarify politely, by asking a leading question, or other faculty), that maintains or raises your intellectual status within that group or in the speaker's eye (meaning it doesn't reveal you as not knowing something that others think you should, and hopefully shows you to know things others don't), and makes sure the speaker feels good about their talk in the case that no one else is asking a question.....well, I think you get the point. It is complex. There are many variables to take into account. And for an inexperienced person (i.e. graduate student), it is hard enough to learn about the existence, much less the subtle balance, of all these variables.

As with children and parents, graduate students learn academic culture from professors. So they try to imitate them, see what they do and don't approve of, listen carefully to what they make fun of or laud. And as with family, the saying "do as I say, not as I do" falls just as flat in the training and mentoring of graduate students. A professor can say "There's no such thing as a stupid question" until she is blue in the face, but if she also tries to hide her ignorance, and never asks "I didn't get ____ on your slide" questions, it won't help. If a professor calls other researches dumb, or idiots, or makes fun of any type of lack of knowledge, students learn that exposing what they don't know, by means of asking a question, is dangerous. That there is always the risk of asking a question that shows you didn't know something (ironically, how questions are designed), and since not knowing everything is looked down upon in academia, it makes you look stupid.

I have a big problem with this notion of stupid. And more generally of what seems like a very antiquated (and contrary to learning theory) concept of intelligence. In some ways, science academics have a pre-education-101 view of intelligence, as innate, as fixed, as static, as being about remembering everything, about knowing a lot of things, as measurable by what you say or ask, as responsible for professional success (and as evidenced by it). The biggest insult you can deliver in science is to question someone's intelligence. Not how they are dressed, not on their social skills, not how much money they make, not what their ethnic background is, not what they look like. Call someone lazy, but just don't close the door on any possibility of self-redemption by deciding they are stupid. A revered scientist can be disheveled, rude, mean, socially awkward, smelly, wearing month old clothes, barely understandable. But no revered scientist is stupid.

"You're no Einstein."

(To be continued....)

How did you manage to fool everyone into thinking you actually deserve your job?

2011-06-24T03:36:00.001-07:00

Yes, I just posted something about 10 hours ago (believe you, me, my brain can tell it didn't get much sleep), but I'm trying to get motivated again to work from home for an hour and what I learned during the last few months of grad school was that writing leads to motivation, not the other way around.

And I'm preparing to do a workshop next week, on the culture of giving talks in academic physics and on the Impostor Syndrome. In my notebook, I have a bunch of keywords written down that look very cool, and they start with high stakes speaking, pass through asking questions and beliefs about intelligence and get all the way over to the Impostor Syndrome by the end. No problem. Apart from the actual content and method of delivery, my workshop is ready.

You think you've made it as far as you have in physics or astronomy (or a host of other careers) because of luck, chance and that those around you have made it there because they actually have what is required - intelligence. You just have to work extra hard so that whatever gatekeeper missed your sorry, lazy, dumb but on those previous tests of competence and right to be employed in science, never finds out he or she made a horrible mistake. You should have been kicked out (preferably while your ex-colleagues joked about your inability to do elliptical integrals in you sleep) long ago.

I know you think I'm mean for writing about you, personally, but actually these are the hallmarks of a person who has what is called Impostor Syndrome. Female grad students have it, but guess what, so do male grad students. And professors. And members of the National Academy of Sciences. Probably Nobel prize winners, too. Not every one of them, but there are people in each of these positions, who you think have it made and way better at this than you, that feel exactly like you do. At least that is what the research says. These feelings of inadequacy go all the way up the ladder. A person who feels this way is often worried that others will find out how "unfit" they really are. And it tends to influence behavior, by making the person try to hide their lack of knowledge - they don't ask questions for fear of being found lacking, they avoid challenging situations, etc.

I've felt this way before. When I was an astronomy graduate student. I had phenomenal undergraduate grades, and awards, and a pretty good physics GRE score. I had great letters of recommendation, and got into a lot of good programs. And I never raised my hand in class or in any kind of talk. Everyone remembered more than I did, knew more than I did, was better at math than I was. It was just a matter of time before I was found out.

The advice I've seen in most places on overcoming Impostor Syndrome focuses on being less critical of yourself, not saying "yes I accomplished that, but..." all the time. And I have to say, that advice didn't do much for me. It didn't help me rethink my role and competence from the inside out. It maybe made me more gracious about compliments, but it didn't make me feel much better. Knowing other people felt the same way, that made me feel better. Less alone. And then doing research on people's feelings about talking in academic settings made me feel much less alone. And after hundreds of hours of thinking and reading research, and going over and over my interview data, and talking with others, it made me look at the culture of academia and how it reinforces the Impostor Syndrome. I'll write about that in another post.

So here is my contribution to the debate - I don't think the goal should be to make people feel less like they got where they were by luck, and to aim to make them feel as smart (however that might happen!) as those they fear around them. I think it is time to highlight that everyone around us got where they were by luck. Sure you have to prepare, you have to work, etc. But you need the right mentor, the right opportunities and the ability to take advantage of them at the right time. I think that those of us with Impostor Syndrome are tapped into a very core characteristic of academic success - to a large extent, it is about luck and not about how smart you are. So yes, you're right, you got where you were by luck. Thing is, so did everyone else.

Almost tomorrow's post

2011-06-23T14:56:00.001-07:00

My laptop clock says 11:56pm. So it must be. By the time I finish writing, it will be tomorrow, so this post will count towards Friday.

Can a bar of dark chocolate really keep me up like this? I should stop experimenting with it. I don't really like the milk chocolate, and tonight, around 8:30pm, I ate a bar of dark. Like, the whole thing.

The city is finally under a dark sky, and the lights of the industrial area peek through the outlines of sunflowers and zucchini plant leaves in the garden. I'm not usually up this late. At least, not after sunset this month.

....

Hmm. Well, dang. That bar was about 3-5 oz of chocolate. Which apparently has 60-100mg of caffeine. Really? As much as brewed coffee or espresso. I guess that settles it, we need both dark and milk chocolate in the house for desserts. And I need to start eating chocolate in place of a coffee drink. Ok, maybe not that last part. So eating the bar of dark chocolate was pretty dumb.

So many things to think about when you can't sleep. Played too much of the Doodle God game, that isn't as logical as I'd like, but keeps sucking me in. You just keep trying to cross different pairs of items to create new ones, and the goal is 248 items, from zombies and superheroes, to seeds and lightbulbs and fish and sky scrapers. And money. And law. And concrete and wood. And you get a new hint to help you out every 2 minutes. Maddening in a slow enough drip that you keep going back.

Ooh, there's A, coughing and crying a bit.

And quiet again. Sweetie pie.

There is also a talk to think about, on my dissertation and on impostor syndrome, to a women physicists group next week. And the book on quantum physics and consciousness that has finally arrived at the consciousness chapter. So if there really isn't much of a self or an "I", where do all these hangups we have (low self-esteem, fear, embarrassment) come from? If the Buddhists have it right about there being no singular, constant self, why all these issues and therapists? If there is no "me" why should I care what someone else thinks of that "me" that doesn't even exist?

Which reminded me of something a counselor once told me regarding worry or sadness. That sometimes, for a chronic worrier like me, the sensation of worry comes before the assignment of that sensation to something. In other words, the body and brain worry first and then a reason is found for that worry. But since they happen so closely together, it feels like the reason comes first, followed by the physical response. I've noticed, now that I'm on a lower dose of antidepressants, that I'm a bit more emotional again. I get more teary more quickly during conflict. And I just feel sad sometimes. And for some reason, this time around, it makes sense what that counselor said - maybe because I'm really watching my moods and tracking when I should be PMS-ing, to try to see if the depression is coming back. I just feel sadness, or hopelessness sometimes. Okay, today a headline about child abuse started that feeling, but somehow I can step back more than before and sense that it isn't always caused by something. Sometimes I just feel sad. Like a hormone thermometer, that fluctuates with some chemical level. Maybe my body is just more sensitive to that kind of thing, and I need to practice not looking for reasons I feel sad.

12:15am, the webpage announces that my draft of this post is autosaved, and I'm going to try to go to sleep again.

To the mountains

2011-06-23T01:06:00.000-07:00

This time the dog came with. For 4 days of sniffing and walking and hanging out in the mountains, near St. Moritz. And friends came with, with their kids who helped A have a great time. I ate a lot more hiking food than actually hiking (I meant to hike, really I did), but just being away was nice. The cows in their summer pastures with their bells clinking, the pretty buildings with the corners all embellished, fondue and hot cocoa and Father's Day French Toast made with a pulverized cookie coating. It was all good.

We stayed in Celerina, about a mile away from St. Moritz, much smaller, quainter, quieter, no Chanel or Jimmy Choo shops.

Ok, almost all was good. It seems the Alps open this coming (not last) weekend. All but one chairlift/gondola was closed, as were all the restaurants on the hikes. So leaving that bag of sandwiches on the dining table when we each thought someone else would bring them? Bad idea. Luckily the carrot sticks, apples, chocolate croissants, nuts and raisins made it, and we survived quite happily.

Now we're home again, and this is one of those uninspired, but I really need to start writing again, blog posts. My work life is picking up quite strongly, mostly with meetings with people which beats trying to stay awake working at my computer at home. I'm also looking for a decent (well, it is my first try), aesthetically pleasing RSS feed reader to consolidate all those blogs I stop by at each morning, so it is more like reading the morning paper than like desperately trying to find one more thing to read before being productive. Seems like Reeder for the Mac gets god reviews, and looks much nicer than the Google reader. We'll see.

Some people

2011-06-09T03:05:00.000-07:00

I had a meeting at 9am this morning. M was away on business last night, so it was me, the pupper and A today. Luxuriously, A slept until 7:30am. Crap, that means walking the dog, feeding us all, getting to daycare and then getting downtown in 1.5 hours. Not going to go well.

Ok, it went smoothly, at least up to that last item. Granted, I had a bit of an altercation with my sock drawer that seems to have taken pointers from M's sock drawer and started holding only one of each pair of socks. Sure, the tights can't separate both legs without me getting suspicious, but I already had my jeans on, and I wanted a pair of socks, damn it. Then I chose the slower, but less walking uphill option to the daycare. Mistake again. Finally, I missed the direct bus to downtown and had to go by bus then tram.

But wait. Once at the building where the person's office used to be, something made me worry that maybe it was no longer. I didn't even remember how to get to the old office, but my iPhone informed me that at least one person in the group was now in another building, just where I had jumped off the tram. Back up the hill. Ring the bell, confused secretary opens the door. I tell her who I'm looking for (the spouse of the person whose office I'm currently standing in), and she pauses, as if she has no idea who I'm asking about. Really? C'mon. REALLY?

Then she asks suspiciously, "Who ARE you?"

I tell her my name and that I have an appointment with said person. Already I'm 30 minutes late, and the other person coming to the meeting isn't answering her cell phone or my texts asking where the office is.

Then the secretary goes to a map on the wall to tell me the name (at this university, the building names are combinations of 3 letters each, that do NOT spell anything....I hate this system) of the building I want. Uh-huh, which helps not at all, and I know I'm going to need the street address.

I ask, perhaps brusquely, more likely desperately, "But do you have the street address?"

She recoils, arches her eyebrows, PUTS HER HAND UP IN MY FACE, and says something like "Wait!" in an offended voice.

Pow. There goes my whole internal composure. I'm being disciplined for....for what, exactly?

I immediately hate her guts, turn down my desperation and try to play nice to get my info and get out as fast as I can. "Bitch," I think. As I walk out and try to remember her stupid directions (lacking any street address, of course), I swear under my breath. Close to 45 minutes late.

And then, for the first time ever, I try to think through what just happened. I stop myself from assuming I did something wrong or rude or at all, to elicit that behavior from her. She might have just been scared that she didn't know the answer to my street address question, and confronted with a person who she thought was judging her for that, she got defensive. Not my fault. Breathe. Not. My. Fault.

I got to the right building, went down the wrong staircase, and met a janitor who asked what I was looking for. And here it all calmed down inside. He was older, calm, gentle, heard what I wanted and just said, I had to go upstairs and to the next building. In German, but he was calming enough, relaxed, that I had the mental capacity to understand what he was saying. My inner alarm bells were no longer ringing.

I found my meeting, 55 minutes late, but that is beside the point in this story. I apologized, and proceeded to be a productive contributor. Things were okay.

So thank you, Mr. Janitor, for being a calming influence in my chaotic morning. And undoing what Ms. Secretary did for me.

Chocolate

2011-06-04T05:25:00.000-07:00

I live in Switzerland. This probably means I should have a lot of opinions, experiences of and suggestions for chocolate. I do like chocolate. In cakes and tortes. In solid bars or spheres. In liquid form.

I have vivid memories of my favorite chocolates.

When I was in Germany in my junior year of high school, the Ritter Sport square bars and Lindt milk chocolates made up a significant part of my diet, which was the opposite of a diet, since I gained my first freshman 15 that year. The food at my school just wasn't as comforting as this stuff.

Then there was the three color chocolate mousse and truffle cake at a sadly long-departed Le Bistro restaurant in Tucson. They would serve you a slice of this thing, only about 3/4 in thick, and at first you'd think you'd been overcharged for dessert. Until you tasted it, had the dark truffle part coat your tongue like velvet, gone to paradise, and then couldn't finish the last 1/4 because of how rich it was.

And in another long-gone restaurant named Spring, in Chicago, there was this after dinner hot chocolate shot that was more like drinking a.... Actually, I have no words for this one. It was light in color, warm, and I think there may have been some thyme in it. It felt like almost nothing going down your throat because it was so smooth but thick - not quite liquid, softer than a pudding. It was glorious. And M and I had hot chocolate served late night at our wedding, at best as a tribute to this drink, because I'm thinking it was only ever meant to exist for a few years in this universe and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it. Never to meet it again.

I remember and search for good chocolate like I do a book or movie.

Now I live in Switzerland. There are large company chocolatiers downtown: Sprungli (the no-export part of the Lindt empire), Teuscher (whose shop windows would give Willy Wonka visual overload), and Laderach (my favorite). There are smaller places, too, like in our village where one of their specialties is, not too appetizingly to me for a gourmet item, chocolate prunes. But I'll have to give it a try some day.

I like my chocolate dark, mostly. Around 60%. And here is what graces our cupboards when they are full of my favorites:

1. Caotina dark chocolate cocoa powder, for mornings when I'm planning to nap after A and M leave

2. Lindt dark truffle bar, from the COOP grocery store, it is the best thing I've found for straight up, eat it plain, dark (no point in getting anything else from Lindt for me). It is sort of the more chocolate, less truffle version of those black wrapper Lindt balls you get in the US.

3. The dark chocolate "bark" from Laderach. This is made in sheets and broken into pieces. The Florentiner has almonds in crunchy caramel. This will always do very very nicely, especially for a gift. Their other barks have all sorts of nuts, or chili, or fruits in them. They have a milk chocolate. You always see tourists stop and salivate at the window before they go in to buy some. We discovered it the day I went into labor.

4. Ritter Sport dark with marzipan, milk with biscuit or milk with corn flakes. We're getting a little less classy now. But these have, on a few occasions, been my lunch when I'm running late to get A from daycare. And they were fine lunches, I remember with fondness.

5. Currently, crispy M&Ms. Yup, we're talking vending machine choices here. I like them chilled in the fridge. Mostly the crispy part is what I find addictive to crunch and it will force me through a whole big bag in a few days. I'm not too proud to admit that. I am a bit upset, though, that there are no plain M&Ms here, because I think they would have been a better option. They only have the crispy or the peanut.

6. Schoggi gipfeli. Swiss German way of saying chocolate croissant. Croissant, filled with chocolate. How can this be a bad thing for all the bakeries to carry? I can't think of any way.

And there you have it. My list.

I think I'm starting to like this town.

2011-05-31T10:14:00.001-07:00

Look outside any window facing Europe and you might just see a glow in the sky. That would be me. After today's day.

9:30am ride cute little funicular 2 minutes down the hill to the central tram stop
9:40am meet N for a great cappuccino and juice at Henrici
10am go with N to the Migros Fitness Park Hammam downtown
1pm leave Hammam and go get another good coffee and some European style cheesecake at Schwarzenbach

2-6:30pm play with A at home, because it is raining outside. Not a single tear. Fun afternoon.

That time in the Hammam was three whole hours of no cell phone, quiet spaces, Moroccan tiles and embellished metal bowls to hold my washcloth. We wore cotton sheets. We sat in steamy, lavender rooms, and soaped and washed. We sat in other, hotter, steamy cinnamon rooms and sweat. We laid around on a hot dry cement bench, in a room lit only by a few Moroccan lanterns, and felt our back muscles melt. We got a 30 minute soap foam and warm water massage, and a 20 minute thyme mud scrub, a light lunch on chaise lounges in a room with a fountain and peppermint tea, and then another, hot stone and oil massage. I don't think I've ever been as clean as I was when I left the building. Three whole hours of paying attention to my skin and my body and just being.

All inside what is a bit like Switzerland's Target, except it is a cooperative. I doubt there is a Target in the world where I could leave feeling so serene. I doubt that there are even Target executives who ever feel that serene.

So yes, I'm liking living in Zurich a bit more today.

Do they even make binkies in my size?

2011-05-30T04:15:00.000-07:00

Two things have been going on at our house lately that probably shouldn't mix. We started trying (on my insistence) to wean our daughter of her pacifier, and she is having a "don't touch me, help me, comfort me, push my stroller, carry me, mom" month. The latter I've posted about before, and I'm still working through my resentment and hurt feelings some of the time.

I'm not so far gone that I can't see the benefits of having a daddy's girl. I get a break. I can go lay down with a magazine for 5 minutes because she could care less what I'm doing. But the becoming just a cook and cleaner is tough on the ego (good thing I've started work again) because I've been so focused on successfully navigating motherhood and bonding with her these last 18 months that it is a slap in the face to be physically pushed away by her tiny hands. "Ne, ne ne ne ne!" she shouts in Lithuanian, her one unconscious concession to my influence.

I feel pretty alone in figuring out how to deal with it, in that I don't feel like I have viable, mature models for how to weather this storm. How do I not take it personally? Should I stay in the room, or can I leave to pout a bit and cool off? What does it mean about me? Or is it just about me as a mother versus her father? Is it a phase? What have others gone through?

This is where Facebook has once again brought me comfort, from those who've gone before me and seen it pass as a phase. From R, posting on here, that's she's also felt hurt by it. And the parenting forums also brought some relief, through my tears yesterday (I'm still hoping it was a PMS day, how emotionally raw I felt by evening), assuring me that it is a phase, that it happens to many people, but most importantly for me, letting me know that a lot of people feel hurt by it. Knowing that my experience, as well as my reaction, is common, helps. That this is a tricky thing to navigate, especially for those of us who are still working through self-esteem issues.

And once again I'm convinced to try to fake not feeling hurt, in the hope that the practice will help me take it better, to concentrate more on myself as a person and not just a mom. Maybe it is finally time for me to take that 3 day trip by myself now. As usual, I can swing quite far in either direction, so at some point I even wondered if I should try to get pregnant again if this was a long phase, because then she wouldn't mind me not being as physically available. Yeah, that last one has been set aside, but it was a good exercise in trying to think around the hurt.

But it is important for me to acknowledge the hurt, because that was not something that was done often in my family. And you can't deal with something, or work through something that you don't admit exists.

There are some changes in our house, now. I've asked M to make sure he takes care of himself enough during the day to be able to be her one-and-only in the evenings and to have the energy for it. I have to find some set of things that A and I can do together, just the two of us. Things she does with her mama. After some serious screaming in the middle of the night, which did not result in a poopy diaper, I seem to have come back into vogue in A's world and we had a fun morning together. And given how much I could have used a huge pacifier this weekend, and a bunch of parenting forums that tell of kids growing out of binkies on their own time, I'm thinking that A should keep hers until she's ready to let go of them.

O, o o ooooo.

2011-05-25T02:09:00.000-07:00

I love getting Oprah magazine each month. The second time I pick it up , after flipping through all the fun early pages, I go for just the books section. I read the synopses, check off which ones I want to try, and today I sit at a great coffee shop in West Zurich, with a really good capucchino and my Kindle and download samples of all those books. For quiet nights or sleepless nights of days when I have an hour to myself.

I'll spend the next hour on my work project and then walk over to a great second hand store before heading back home to do some more work.

Oh, and my shopping lent is over, like I mentioned yesterday. It was good. I feel a bit re-set in terms of worrying about how I look, and much less antsy to using shopping as therapy. Just dropped another dress at the tailor to fix it to fit better. Add straps 'cause mama don't have the rack to hold it up on my own. Besides, I have a climby, grabby, jubilant toddler who is great at pulling down loosely tied pajama pants as well as tube top dresses.

I'm still not totally happy with my post yesterday. Something is still missing from the idea of the real me, but I'll have to wait to figure that out. I have some stuff to go do now.

I LOOOVE you, just, the way yoooou, aaaare.....

2011-05-24T02:35:00.000-07:00

I've been craving new coffee cups. We have these basic white ones, from IKEA, and although they set a very classic table, they are a bit too tall and narrow for my taste. I like to see a big surface area in my hot morning drinks. And all identical white, not as practical for those friends-with-toddlers brunches where you can forget all sitting down at once, not to mention keeping track of your coffee. Little monkeys running and getting into precarious situations, crying, eating, and generally being toddlers don't help anyone's short term recall of which cup was theirs.

I let myself do some test cup shopping, seeing as how my shopping lent is over. One plain white mug from Bodum which is probably the best size and shape (low cylinder), and then two for fun mugs from the campus art and paper supply shop. Ever since my cousin, L, encouraged me to wear that astronomy image tank top "with irony", I've realized how many other things I can do with irony. I give you....

my "born in the USA" mugs. It would be way more fun to have coffee at my place now that with Mr. Bland White Mug, right?

Anyway, I'm slowly getting back to eating my way across the omnivore's diet, and back to consuming things with milk in them, after this past weekend's flu. And at the same time, I've cut my anti-depressant dose in half. Which is the main point of my post.

I don't have my epiphanies all at once, and writing about complex issues helps me get to new places with them. So back to this idea of who "I am", on or off, or 1/2 off (or on) anti-depressants. I'm already a bit worried about how I'll feel, scared that maybe I'm just an irritable person naturally, the real me, and that my options in life are:

(1) nauseous after meals, fatigued after 10 hours of sleep, but fairly unflappable with A, and putting any other kid we might try to have through a gestation with me on medication or

(2) irritable, faster to get flustered by her tantrums (the kid wasn't even started on tantrums when I started the meds last year), more emotionally up and down, and more of a worrier. And who knows what kind of a mess if we ever decide for me to get pregnant again.

Which do I choose? Who am I?

Now I'm pretty sure these won't be my only choices, given how much more complex the world usually is, but for now, that's what I see as my choices. And that first one, apart from the uncomfortable physical feelings, has this air of "unnatural."

So now I'm thinking through that concept. Why unnatural? Or at least, why is that more unnatural that the other things I have used in life that I wasn't born with? Like my super strong glasses. Unnatural. My inhaler. Nope, not something that grows on trees or vines. My vaccines. Natural source but totally unnatural delivery. And let's not forget my whole reproduction story. Un. Natural. I shouldn't have gotten pregnant, or delivered a baby, or breast fed, if we were talking natural. But I don't get hints of disappointment from the same people about that as about my meds. I got it from myself, but long ago decided that nature can be a real bitch, and is really not into empathy (can we just dial back the clock to 1 a.m. last Thursday, when I was holed up in the bathroom, swearing and exploding?).

This "natural" person, then, who exactly is that? Under what conditions is someone more natural (which seems to be the ideal)? And what is the ideal based on? Surprisingly, for me, there seems to be almost a "the way God made you" sense about anti-depressants, and coming from non-believers (including me). But again, what is the benchmark for this person? I think each of us has to choose the balance for ourselves, because the choices are so dependent on culture, on the way our bodies turned out, our current situation in life.

So for now I'm trying to not worry too much about whether the lower dose is already making me more irritable (because I think I might feel less exhausted, but then again, I'm recovering from a flu), or whether A is just extra cranky these days. With the babysitter last night, who is like a baby whisperer, she was cranky, too. So I'm going to stick with more cranky for her, instead of me, but keep a little, peripheral vision watch. When do I go from "I know, sweetie, something just doesn't feel good right now" to "Really? C'mon! Just, please calm down"?

And for those who might encourage me to "just not think worry it!", I encourage you to actively not think about cabbage for the next 30 seconds. As you read this. I mean it. How is that not thinking about it going?

I'll pass on the clams, thanks.

2011-05-23T01:01:00.000-07:00

Ugh. I was hoping for our family's sake it was food poisoning from the pasta and clams.

A nasty, horrible, be glad for indoor plumbing and the white noise machine in the baby's room next door flu hit our house this weekend. I got taken down on Thursday night, M went down Saturday night, and Baby A....well, she was just slower. Given that M and I were no-calories-in-my-body tired all weekend, having a slow, calm Baby A was actually a gift. She spent many minutes in a stroller, just sitting, watching the world go by. Not trying to stand up, or pull off her socks, or climb down the front, or rock it until it flipped over. And, snuggly A was back, too. That's the one I get all my cuddles in with to last me through the high energy times.

It was also a daddy weekend. Actually, it has been sort of a daddy month. I'm definitely the runner-up these days, and it is giving me time to practice not getting my feelings hurt. Just to go with it. Wanting to collapse on a bed for another 4-hour nap makes for a good mindset for this, too.

"You want to go with your papa instead? Oh....phew. Good. I'm going to go pass out again. Wake me if something starts to burn."

But I'm not always as gracious. It still stings to be the main caregiver and not the main go-to parent. But only because I think those two go hand in hand. M has never seemed to take it personally when she prefers me, other than being frustrated if it is his turn to attend to her at night. But it doesn't seem to hurt his feelings. Why? It isn't because he has none, or that they don't get hurt. I think it is because dads aren't supposed to be the ones a kid always goes to. It is the social convention. The "should" part, that keeps his ego intact, and makes my ego's lower lip quiver just a bit when she pushes my hand away but not his.

So I'm trying to go back to a better formula, that has worked before for me. Being a mom means knowing her the best, not being her favorite. It isn't a two-way arrow, at least not always, not necessarily. For me, being a mom has to be about knowing what she wants, and right now, it is her dad when he's around. And that's ok. Because it means I know my kid, which is more important to me really than being her favorite. Ok, I want it to be more important to me.

Just as with a bottle or some cough medicine, M should be in my bag of tricks. If A wakes up screaming (instead of crying), pacifier still in mouth, I should try a minute of calming and then carry her in to M. I can be pretty sure it is what she wants right now. And it keeps my sense of motherhood intact if it is based more on problem solving for her rather than being what and who she wants all the time.

Yeah, ok. So I'm going to go practice that now. Somehow.

And have some more Coke in a mug, because when you live with a toddler who wants to try everything you're having, but already knows that coffee isn't for babies but for adults, it is a small blessing that poured Coke looks a LOT like black coffee. M and I had a lot of "coffee" this weekend.

Me and the dog, out for a walk

2011-05-19T04:39:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, all the cat and cow poo she eats, the barking she does at non-existent cats, and the needing to lick herself (extremely loudly) in the middle of the night, all falls away, because she also brings me for walks into the wet, cool forest on days like this, and it is beautiful there.

Being the new kid, again

2011-05-18T06:26:00.000-07:00

How old do you have to be not to get the "new kid" nerves in a new place? Last night I went out dancing for the first time since I was 3 weeks pregnant. I was still in Tucson then and most of the people I danced with had no idea. Given how hard it had been to conceive, I was a bit worried about the rougher leads trying do to some crazy spin-me-by-my-stomach move, so I just told everyone I had hurt my back and to lead gently. My last night of dancing in Tucson.

I finally had the energy, the babysitting, and the time to go dancing here in Zurich last night. In a small space near one of the playgrounds I really like.

M was off on a work dinner, so I suited up (gotta dress comfy but in a skirt that swings nice and a t shirt that won't bertray you when it gets sweaty), got out my dance sneakers (way more stable than the wedges, especially for a bad back and out of shape mama), and went on my way. Once I was within walking distance, I realized I was nervous. A room of new people, who to dance with, did I remember how to dance, and could I handle all the asking I'd have to do as the new person (tiring at best, disheartening at worst)? At nearly 40 years old, triumphantly with a successfully navigated new motherhood, country of residence, marriage, work life, depression....and I was still nervous.

My friend J posted today that she got a job in the middle of nowhere where she will be alone for the first many months, not even her cat with her. And she is nervous. But she is one of the funniest people I know. The person I would expect to have no problems in a new place. S there it is - we all still get nervous. Of isolation, of what people will think of us, how it will go, what we were thinking of undertaking this new thing. And invariably it is these adventures that enrich life in ways we hoped but didn't imagine.

So good luck, J, and congratulations!

My night of dancing turned out great. Luckily I lead as well as follow, so even though the place was 3:1 women to men, I got my self-promised 5 good dances, with 3 guys and 2 women. And the biggest mistake I made? After asking the best lead in the room to dance, and having a great dance, I walked away afterwards, having thanked him. Guess what, here the norm is to have two dances with each partner. I threw away a totally great second dance! I'll have to rememdy that next time.

Oh, and the second place winner of the Eurovision contest this year, Italy, has a pretty danceable song.

Times, they are a changin'....at least as far as coffee goes

2011-05-17T04:12:00.000-07:00

Lovely, cool but sunny Saturday. Baby A was sleeping over from Friday night at her babysitter's, and we slept in until 8am (college self, there's something we need to talk about you savoring more while you can). At 9am we were off to Bern, for a 2 1/2 hour coffee class with, get this, a Swiss Barista Champion. This dude had gone to compete in the world championships. You know he knows coffee. Better than you'll ever know it, or want to know it.

We met him at a coffee shop for our private, in English class, just me and M. (This was sort of a birthday present for M, but since the other present I'd planned came through, it became an anniversary present for us both. This also meant that if he hated it, it would still be ok as long as I didn't. I've mentioned I go to counseling, right?)

We got some history and background about coffee, and then tried to grind and measure out 9 grams for a single shot. That shit is hard to do. You're not even talking about the part where any water comes in contact with the coffee yet. You're still at the "making bean into small small pieces" part. And realizing your $40 grinder from the local equivalent of a Target is so tragically unqualified to claim that it grinds beans for drinkable coffee that it is a wonder you haven't spit out everything you've brewed these last 2 years.

Let me be clear, Mr. Champion was a totally cool, not snobby, not sarcastic guy. It was just that after seeing the grinders he had us practice on, and why, I realized that we may just need to buy a super-grinder first, pay our dues, make some great french press coffees and only then go on to the espresso machine. We may just not be able to handle all that metal and a fancy grinder all at once.

Anyway, then we went on to try actually pulling shots from the machine. Oh wait, nope. Tamping was next. Using that heavy thingy that looks like a stamp, to press down the coffee. Level. Not crooked. Otherwise, you're once again in trouble. As M put it, water takes the easiest, least crowded, path and if you've tamped your espresso at an angle in the portafilter, you're going to pull some funky shots. After that, you attach the portafilter, turn on the water, and count to 5. Apparently that is how long it should take for the coffee to start pouring. At which point, you scrutinize it like it was your senior thesis and the finalist project for the Westinghouse Genius Teenagers Way Smarter Than Us All science fair all in one. How wide is the band of liquid? How viscous? Color? How smooth or do you have unfortunate, loser bubbles in the coffee stream?

Again, let me be clear, Mr. Champion was the most gracious of teachers, having us look at all of this and then guess what we needed to adjust. Grind fineness? Amount of coffee in the shot? It just surprised me how much there was that could, and did, go wrong. The reject pitcher (where all the "you don't really want to drink that one" shots went to end their life) was pretty full at the end of our class.

But, we had a great time, realized how good it was that M and I were never physics lab partners, and that our current grinder should probably just bow out gracefully and retrain in the spice grinding business. And, I managed to pull a few decent shots (good enough for a few cappuccinos), and let me tell you, that amazing coffee drink I've been searching for, it is not so exotic. I came close to making one myself. I drank down 2 cups of better tasting drinks than I've had in all of Europe apart from Amsterdam, and I made them myself. Well, with some help from M. He seems to have a way with the art of milk foaming.

We even came home with some recommendations from Mr. Champion for the few places in Zurich he thinks do great coffee. Cafe Noir, is one of the names I will bestow on you now. And Henrichi, in the Old Town.

Enjoy.

My "morning" coffee - a post I've been trying to put up for days

2011-05-17T01:52:00.001-07:00

I am still needing an extra morning nap these days. One, because my body is still tired. Two, because my baby has been sleeping on average an hour less at night and at daycare. Crap. I'm pretending (using all the make-believe skills I've cultivated in learning to roll with the punches of parenting) that it is temporary. Because of molars, or the weather. It is getting awfully warm these days, after all. Or because of the rainy, cool weather last night. Or because of the spoonful of chocolate truffle birthday cake she ate last night. It is basically because of something temporary.

If it isn't, obviously we'll adjust. But since I can't imagine how right now, I'm pretending it will end soon. I have to start back to work in the coming weeks.

I'm going to need more coffee.

This is what my first cup of the day often looks like. Fancy, huh? There's the birthday candle lobster, helping model the coffee and accoutrements. But let's be clear - the coffee press was freshly made for M's cup, around 8am (by said husband). I took a nap from 9am to 10:30am. At 11am, I filled the Swiss flag mug with milk, put it in the microwave for 2 minutes on "MAX" and then put the cold coffee in it. With a teaspoon of sugar. Works for me.

I've also spent an hour (ahem, or a bit more) this morning on Etsy. M likes sculpture. So do I, but he actually likes the idea of having some in our apartment. I'm not against the idea, but I am against the idea of having an expensive three-dimensional object that Baby A, Toddler A, or Moody Teenager A will destroy. And I know that M likes all sorts of sculpture, not just the expensive kind. And I like organic stuff right now. So I was searching for wood sculpture.

As usual, there was the tacky, the sappy, the poorly made, the "did you even put any thought into that?" along with the whimsical (bunny with a tool belt), the interesting (book sculpture), the wood stuff I might like in our bedroom or hallway, and the cute mug I found while looking for new coffee cups instead of closing that Firefox window.

And thank god it is a cloudy day, finally. I don't feel so bad for my flowers and plants under the broken-in-open-position sun shade on the balcony. And the smell of rain, the thick white clouds dripping tentacles onto the hill across the valley, and the sense of rest for the body. No need to find yet another great outdoor destination for the afternoon.

I don't want to share my toys anymore

2011-05-11T03:03:00.000-07:00

Every time my friend I and I go to this one park in Zurich with our kids, one of our plastic sand toys manages to disappear. Even with our kids’ names written on them. Another child will carry one away and it somehow makes its way into another stroller or diaper bag.

Now, I realize that we all have IKEA sand toys around here. And yellow IKEA kitchen funnels. And all other things plastic from IKEA. But, c’mon. Don’t steal our toys. Don’t let your kid walk off with another child’s toy. I want to be able to loan kids toys at the park. I think it makes for a nice sense of community, especially if you’ve just stumbled on this great new spot with the water fountain and your kids would loooooove to play in it. I’m a big supporter of magical, surprise moments like that, for my kid and yours.

Just stop taking our toys home, ok?

It happened again yesterday (I’m going to start bringing Tupperware containers instead), but otherwise we had a lovely time at the park. The water feature was on, the kids stripped down to diapers and less, and loads of cute little toddler butts were braving the freezing water to splash and pour and play. And once in a while, pee.

Water play is such a big thing for kids. Baby A loves baths, splashing with buckets and cups and the baby pool on the balcony, fountains, sinks. You name it, if there is liquid, she’ll play (down to the water in her bottle at breakfast or the cup of milk on the table). Do they gain intuition from it? Is it just fun and then they have to stop playing at some point? Is it an integral part of the conservation of volume understanding? Is it just this crazy substance that you can touch but not grab?

It makes you buoyant. It slips through your fingers. It helps you slide across a rubber mat on the lawn. It makes dry bread easier to swallow. Plants need it to grow. You float in it as an embryo. Dogs love to play in it.

Sorry, I’m tired this morning and the cleaning lady came early so I am biding my time outside the house, at a café, having a hard time thinking much or writing well. I have my Swiss magazine and my iPhone German-English translator helping me read the article titles. Let’s be honest – I’m understanding about 50% of them even with the help of 2-4 words looked up per title.

And since I’m being random and uninspired today, I’ll mention that I’m still on my clothes and house decoration buying Lent. Which I’m happily surviving, partially by taking existing clothing to the tailor in our village to take in, let out, fix and such. I even got the curtains down there for a proper hemming. Now the baby’s room blue shower curtain is no longer staple-hemmed. My Target denim shirt fits my shoulders and my waist (this doesn’t happen often to me). On Mother’s Day, I even wore a dress from 3 years ago purchase, that was too tight on my arms, because he’d loosened the arm holes. Oh, and let’s not forget shoes. I brought in a pair of Teva sandals I bought last summer to move the tie loops so they fit my foot. Amazing what you can find to wear, in your closet.

Crinkles are coming

2011-05-09T01:02:00.000-07:00

There used to be a store in Tucson, which we often passed on the drive home. It was one of those tchotchke places, that sold decorations for holidays. Actually, I never went in, but it always had a fake pine in the window, covered in ornaments for Thanksgiving or Valentine's day. It was one of those stores that I'm surprised can even stay in business. And in this case, it didn't. But while it was there, it felt like every 2 months they would advertise with a huge sign on the shop window: "Crinkles are coming!" and then, "Crinkles are here!"

I have no clue what a crinkle is. Or what crinkles are. Or, obviously, even whether you purchase a bunch (like with flowers) or a gallon (maybe they are more like water) of crinkles. But they sure were on their way often.

A few weeks ago, I was in a hardware store here in Zurich, with my friend K, and her toddler. As we walked the aisles, I found myself mystified by the light bulb selection. I somehow couldn't find non-fluorescent bulbs in the size I needed for the dining room lamps. K quietly giggled and said that at that instant, there was no doubt as to who Baby A's mom was. We had the same concentrated frown. I smiled. K effortlessly scanned the display and quickly found my light bulbs. We went to pay.

Another friend recently mentioned something about sunglasses and not wanting to encourage those frown lines between her eyebrows. I know how she feels. I've often tried to be more conscious of my "passive face" expression. More often than not, a frown creeps in, as if I'm silently upset. And I'm not. My face just does that. So does my mom's, and her sister's, and her other sister's. And probably my cousin's. And my daughter's. It's a family thing.

I already have wrinkle lines up there. Some of the first "I'm getting old" features I see when I look in the mirror. But after what K said, I'm wearing them proudly.

So wrinkles are coming! Other wrinkles are (already) here! They make it easy to identify me as Baby A's mama. And I like that.

My day

2011-05-07T08:32:00.001-07:00

We make plans to have friends and their kids over this Saturday for a late brunch, and see what other families might want to go to Sunday brunch early for Mothers' Day. It is Mothers' Day weekend and I ask M for two things: (1) flowers (because I like them a lot), and to let me sleep in Saturday morning. Sleeping in mostly means that when Baby A wakes up, he takes her and maybe the dog out. Because if they stay here they will probably come find me, or at least the dog will need a morning pee walk. Basically it is asking him to take both the baby and the dog for an hour.

I sleep the night before with baby A, but she wakes some 5 times (maybe it is getting too warm at night for the heater?) looking for her binky. So when morning comes and M has had a decent night's sleep, he grabs the baby, and I head to our bedroom. The three of them take off towards town, in search of flowers, and I fall blissfully back into bed.

Such a treat.

Mothering is so different than I expected, but I feel pretty good at it. I am learning to roll with the punches, I don't freak out anymore when baby A acts out more at home than school (after all, she also "paints" the crib sheets with her poo at school and not at home), I take her tantrums in stride. I trust that I know what I'm doing when she's getting cranky as I insist on her trying to nap. I try to be her solid rock when her emotions and temper start to storm. The calm to her tempest. And most times, I succeed. We laugh together, I love hearing her voice and watching her eat things she really likes.

And then I realized, just as our friends arrive for brunch, that this time last year was hard. Really hard. It is at the hospital in the countryside that I met this friend coming over today. A year ago we were both in a treatment program for mothers and families having a tough time. Who were at the end of their rope.

Which means I've reached another milestone that takes me a step further away from the painful beginning - a year since the hospital stay, and almost a year since she (and then we) started sleeping better. Since we could start not caring what the problem was those first many months of her life, because we were no longer so dangerously close to falling apart. And that all the milestones now, with the weather coming back around to each season to remind my body and brain of that last year, will be improvement milestones. The coming of Mothers' Day has not made me nervous or scared, like the coming of baby A's first birthday did.

I've learned, also, to give other mothers in other situations more leeway for ways in which they parent differently than I do. Single moms, full time work-at-home moms, and full time back-to-work moms. We love our kids, and do our best. I do my best.

And I'm a mom. Whose little girl doesn't want to fall back asleep with when she wakes in the night, or on a plane, but who will run in to greet and wake her the next morning. I let her stand in her stroller, even after I flipped it running across a street median and fell on top of it (granted, I go slowly now). I let her have her binky to calm down. And the decisions I make are ok. As am I.

I'm a good mom. And I love my baby.

It's about perspective

2011-05-05T00:35:00.000-07:00

I looked up body dysmorphic disorder this morning. I do not suffer from something this extreme. But I do have a skewed version of what I look like. For a long time, I've felt like I need to worry about what I wear so I don't look too masculine. It probably didn't help that in college I tried to blend (or maybe disappear) and in physics that meant wearing oversized t-shirts and shapeless jeans. I had to buy men's boots for my first super-freezing winter at school, and a men's leather biker jacket (I didn't have to buy this, but I had to buy a men's size to fit my shoulders in a sweater in it). And more than once I was mistaken for a man from behind.

Given that I'm six feet tall and not super curvy, and was wearing a large biker jacket one of those times, I can see how that happened. And that it doesn't mean I look like a man.

I still worry that I do, though.

I also realized over the winter that I feel a lot bigger than I actually am. The shoulders require me to buy at least one size up from what the rest of my upper body needs as far as size goes. I have to do a quick-cross-my-arms-in-front-of-me test for any shirt or jacket to make sure it won't tear if I go to pick up something. So yes, I have broad shoulders. And big feet. And that is about it.

Yet I feel huge a lot. Or I feel like my thighs are big. And I blame a lack of perspective.

Or the existence of perspective. Or both.

This is what I see when I look down on my legs and feet from my towering 72 inches.

So if my feet are already big, my thighs must be huge. And those pants look like 80's pleated things. Ugh.

But let's see this same person, a minute later, from the side.

Uh huh. Not quite the same. The shoulders are still broad, and now the legs look completely different. Where this those mom pants go? Who is this woman? Oh, wait, that's me. And right now, with my decreased appetite and Baby A's increased energy (really? has she started fusing Helium now instead of Hydrogen? where does this child get the calories to do what she does?), I'm skinny. Even if I don't "feel" skinny.

I think I need to stop looking earthward for a while, at my feet. Perspective can be problematic. So can a culture obsessed with women as objects and women's looks, but let's face it, perspective isn't helping.

My new bookstore

2011-05-04T07:27:00.000-07:00

I have a Kindle. The electronic book reader. If I lived in the US I may never had bought one, but it is so nice to have instant access to so many books in English, here in Zurich. Parenting books, self-help (you're not surprised by that one, I'm sure), novels, something I just heard about on NPR.

These days, instead of roaming the aisles of a Borders' store, I roam the book pages of my favorite magazines to see the recommendations, with my Kindle next to me. And the best part is that I can download all sorts of book samples for free. I don't need to read the first 10 pages of every book I find interesting in one trip to the store. I can download them to the reader and then on a night I'm having trouble sleeping, pull one up.

And perhaps most important, baby A has not yet figured out how to turn on my Kindle. That day is coming, I know, but for now it is a boring static image. She presses a few letter keys, nothing happens, she moves along to find my iPhone or the remote control. Something more rewarding of her efforts.

At this point I have some 30 books on my reader, and just downloaded a sample of a book about adult LEGO builders. I probably won't buy the book, based on the writing, but it is nice to have a chance to browse this way.

Sure, paper books are still nice, but they get less so when you already lug a diaper bag around or have to pack for a long trip with a toddler. Or move across an ocean to a smaller living space. It is much less disappointing to not read any of 10 books when they are all in one light piece of plastic than it is to not read 10 paper books. Think of the shoes I could have packed instead!

I didn't realize this blog was so widely read

2011-05-03T04:20:00.000-07:00

On Glee last night, they used a diabetes/insulin analogy to question how people look down on medications for mental illness. Who knew that even Glee writers read my blog? Hee hee.

A friend of mine has recently been going through the "should I start taking anti-depressants" quandry, and this issue of who we are on medication versus who we are off medication came up in our discussions. It reminds me of a reading group I sat in on for some 4-5 sessions once, in grad school. The readings were tough, about identity and self, and the discussions were intense. I mostly sat back and listened, trying to soak up as much as I could. I remember only one thing from those 10 hours. For me, that's actually pretty good.

It was on the sense of "I" or "me", a solid self inside our head. And how that "I" is constantly being constructed by who we are interacting with, who our audience it, and even down to the level of using a language (be it English or another) that has been constructed by others. Even the words each of us has available, with which we define "I" or "me", are not our own. We are not independent of culture on any level. And the notion of a "me" separate from "you" came heavily under scrutiny during those two hours. It was one of those times that make you question a lot of the things you take for granted. And in a way, although we are each alone with our thoughts and feelings, in this way, we are intimately connected to all we come in contact with.

I guess what I most take away from that class, is to question the basis for the questioning about how I might be changed (for the worse, is usually the assumption) by being on anti-depressants. That there is an immutable I out there to be changed in the first place.

In talking with my friend, the use of the word "depression" to mean generally sad also came up. If it wasn't used in everyday speech to mean just sad today, it might be easier to disentangle treating sadness from depression. And all the baggage that comes with that discussion.

Oops. Time to go pick up Baby A.

spilled milk and a dead man

2011-05-02T01:34:00.000-07:00

The news this morning is that Osama Bin Laden is dead. And I'm finding all the "shit, yeah! Awesome! Celebrate!" postings on Facebook a bit uncomfortable. All the more enthusiastic, it seems, from people who are more Christian. It is strange to see so many people so gleeful about a death. Isn't the gleefulness about people's death what we thought made him so evil in the first place? Relief I could understand better, but I guess it has been a while since most people were anxious about him still being uncaught. I wonder what people think will happen now.

I didn't mean to leave such a hater-post up (about the runner) for so long as my most recent post. It is the first time I've felt I have to write something else so that it doesn't seem like I'm just angry for days. Because I sat on the couch, and ate a whole chocolate rabbit while watching the royal wedding on Friday midday. I thought the hats many women wore were cool. Ok, some were perhaps a bit much, but most of them made me want to have somewhere to wear a hat like that. And we had a good weekend, full of farmer's market strawberries, a totally messed up batch of compote, good (but forgot the baking soda AGAIN) scones, baby A's first sleepover at her babysitter's, and a bedroom shade that works for the first time in over a year.

Oh, and Baby A is now a strawberry bandit. We've been calling her the Elmex Bandit for a few months now, because this child loves tubes of this Swiss toothpaste, for carrying around the house. Smooth, plastic rubber, fun huge cap to put in mouth. And she'll happily take 3 at a time (one long ago empty, others still in use) and cruise her territory. But this weekend we went up to visit a friend who has a share in one of the great gardens on the hill above our apartment. And the teeny berries were starting to ripen. Our friend N's friend showed her how to pick a few and she was off - harvesting like a pro. Baby A is going to know where fruits and vegetables come from. I have finished most of my balcony planting - some cherry tomatoes and zucchini in the big box, along with a peony (because I love these flowers in a visceral way and they had one deep violet flower plant left this weekend for sale), some peas that might take to a cheap trellis, a bunch of herbs (two kinds of parsley, dill, rosemary, chives), and on the floor, within Baby A grazing reach, two kinds of strawberries, basil, arugula, and mint.

You don't do it because you like it, do you?

2011-04-29T04:28:00.001-07:00

Hey, Mr. Yeah, you with the yellow and black color coordinated running shirt, shoes and shorts. You know how you just appeared out of nowhere on my foggy morning walk with the dog? And the pupper was off-leash in a part of the walk where that is completely ok, even with you Swiss? And she came up to you and wagged her tail and was all excited because, um hello, you just ran towards her out of nowhere! Poof! Of course she's going to get excited and maybe just a bit cautious.

And you had that pissed-off look on your face as I tried to calmly call her back, so you would know from the tone of my voice that she's totally harmless?

I realized, as I tried to quell all the shame I feel whenever something like this happens to me, even though it isn't my fault or responsibility, that you probably hate either dogs or running. I mean, I didn't do anything even close to wrong. And that look on your face tells me that even though M hates whenever he sees you and all your running buddies that are out early New Year's Day, and other inappropriate, inhuman moments, tells me that you do this as some sort of self-punishment. Or, you hate dogs and hate that I saw your reaction. Or both.

Anyway, I've decided to just let it go, because I had a lovely walk through a foggy morning and, apart from a grumpy runner who I had every reason to scream at the sudden appearance of, I did nothing wrong. Chalk up another one on the "things that are not my fault list."

Oh yes, the hats at the royal wedding are pretty sweet.

Not taking a photo is the whole point

2011-04-27T23:57:00.000-07:00

I just finished reading "Cinderella Ate My Daughter", a book by Peggy Orenstein. Fast read, about the Disney princess culture and its effect on girls. Not the best book I've read, but she makes some interesting points. About how Disney tapped into the developmental stage where kids are worried that their sex (boy or girl) might be fluid, changeable, and try to assure they stay who they are by being as masculine or feminine as possible. For girls, enter the pink princess stage. Orenstein also talks about the Disney live princesses, like Miley Cyrus or Brittney Spears, who all seem to follow the innocent/virginal to skanky/centerfold route.

In the end, the author doesn't do much in the way of suggestions for boosting girls' self-esteem and helping them value themselves separate from their looks. She gives a few suggestions, like telling your daughter she's beautiful when she's covered in dirt and in her soccer uniform, and not talking about looks too much. And not obsessing about your own looks in front of her - although, I'd say even in private, learn to like who you see in the mirror, because kids pick up on everything. They do as we do, not as we say. If you don't feel worthy deep down inside, your kid is going to learn that - they are learning machines, these little humans.

Anyway, the bit from the book that is in my mind this morning is the part where the author talks about virtual identities and presence. And almost as a side note, she mentions how people (herself, she has noticed) have started to delay experiences of the real world, instead thinking how they (she) will blog, tweet or update their status about them. So on the foggy dog walk this morning, I left my phone in my pocket and tried my best to just see the trees, feel the soaked grasses against my fingers, and be there while I was physically there.

It was nice. I don't do that very often. With baby A, I've noticed that I tend to only relax and muse on her photos after she's asleep, and I'm not actively responsible for her well-being. I can look at her, notice things, dwell. But I also do that with situations. For me there is a part of the behavior that I think has to do with the fear of being overwhelmed by being in the moment itself. If I let it take me over, within seconds, I will start to fear its end. If I get too caught up in rapture, the next thought on my mind will be to mourn its impending loss. So it is a safety mechanism for me.

Sure, I'd love to be in the moment. But I'm terrified it will sweep me away.

I highly doubt that

2011-04-22T15:24:00.000-07:00

What makes for sleepless nights? I'm still coughing from my cold, so falling asleep is hard, but even so, actual sleepiness is hard to find tonight. Baby A also only found her sleep after 9:30pm. No weariness for M, either. We stayed up way way past our normal bedtime, until 11:30pm, watching half of Chocolat.

I remember last time I saw the movie how I suddenly wanted good chocolate. Really good chocolate. I think I went to the Godiva store at Park Mall in Tucson. I think I was disappointed. Or maybe it was just late at night and nothing but Walgreens was open. I just remember wanting chocolate like Vienne made in the movie. That would touch your soul through your senses. And then wanting to make chocolate like that.

Leave it to me to live in Switzerland now and see that film again on Good Friday. I don't celebrate Catholic holidays the same way anymore, but this country sure does close down all its stores for weekends like this. Except, tomorrow. Many stores will probably be closed, but I think that the chocolate shops might just be open. One last shopping day to Easter baskets.

The movie got me thinking about religion, as well. About doubting. About why it was such a horrible thing that Thomas doubted Jesus was going to rise from the dead. Like no man had ever done before, since people don't do that. In some way, wasn't the rising from the dead one of the first ways you could actually tell Jesus wasn't just human? So here's poor Thomas, just being rational, and he gets this horrible reputation. And the man even lays out his conditions for believing Jesus has risen, like a good scientific thinker would ("here's what would make me change my mind - fingers in wounds"), and somehow every sermon I've heard about him faults him for these things. Oh ha ha, that silly Thomas. Had to go and open his mouth and be all cocky. Anyway, whatever I do or don't think about Jesus, I still think Thomas sounds like a pretty good guy.

And tomorrow, I might just go in search of some soul-hugging chocolate. For now, I'll just try to forget about the chocolate and stop rethinking where else in this apartment I might have lost my phone. Maybe I'll finally fall asleep. Right after I sneak off to the fridge to have a go at those crispy M&Ms I bought a few days ago. Because, let's face it, chocolate that feeds your soul and chocolate that stops hunger so you can fall asleep...two completely different creatures.

Pass the Kleenex

2011-04-19T06:10:00.000-07:00

I probably shouldn't be writing this right now. I'm sick, just a spring head cold, but my ears are plugged, my head is plugged, and doing anything more intellectually challenging than drinking from a cup is a struggle. But, I'm one of those women who feels like she isn't holding her own when she isn't actively doing something. I've written about this before, the not feeling like "enough," but it continues to amaze me how primal that urge is, to gain worth by what I do.

The dog has been napping with me all day, and apart from having free reign of the balcony, she has only gotten to go to the corner potty spot. I'll sit with her there for a while, let her smell the sights, but going up any hills is just not in the cards for me today.

And the babysitter picked up baby A from daycare and is with her now.

I've got a cup of tea in hopes that a theraflu drink with an English Breakfast chaser will help me at least get something done. Because I have to, right? Otherwise, my stock starts dropping. So I've made myself send a form to finish up to M, and I made some rhubarb, apple, pear, raisin, prune compote for the baby for her afternoon snack (actually, came out sweet enough with no added sugar), and watched her try to stuff both hands full of it into her mouth at once. And I'm back in bed, resting my slightly spinning head.

I'm not so sick that I couldn't do most daily things, but it would take it out of me. And right now my husband's job is enough. And all the other days I do a lot. So why does this make me so nervous?

Oh, and I've managed to lose my phone again. This time, I really hope, in the house. But the batteries are drained so even the "find my iPhone" app has let me down. I guess it is okay, because I can't spend so much time lamenting that I don't have the energy to go take a photo of all the shoes we came back from the US with and write something riveting about shoes and feet and all of that.

There is one thing that has made me feel like today's rest and extra help is okay. The babysitter relayed the message from the daycare that they think baby A might be into what they call the terrible three's stage. Well, I may be just able to keep a kid and dog alive and clean by myself right now, but a full blown tantrum from the little one today would have ended in her in a crib, the dog (and perhaps me, too) in a crate, and a lot of rocking back and forth until M came home. Thankfully, we have our babysitter, and that scene didn't have to play out today.

The bounty of American magazines

2011-04-14T03:00:00.000-07:00

I love Utne Reader. And WIRED magazine, and BITCH magazine (big surprise, huh?). And I intend to enjoy every minute of Black & White Photography magazine, American Scholar magazine, and Philosophy Now magazine. And whatever other things I scooped off the rack at the Border's in Tucson last week. It was glorious, to have that much choice. And to imagine myself taking one of these periodicals with me on a tram or to the dining room window seat.

Ahhhh, a little slice of familiar. But also new.

So on my way into town yesterday I has Utne reader with me. I only read a few articles, hoping to save it for a few more trips. And one of them was about a study on increased depression and low-self esteem in kids who see more advertising. You see what you don't have, what appears to make all those glossy happy people so happy, and want it. You find yourself lacking.

And as I sit here checking out how my blonde highlights spray is working, wondering if I should have bought the red flip flops at Target, too, I think "how dumb." It isn't just kids - it is all of us. Okay, it is me. And I didn't really think how dumb.

I looked at all my catalogs. Did you even realized J. Peterman still existed?! I haven't gotten a catalog from them in over 15 years! And they are the worst. Not even photos in that catalog, but watercolor drawings, and stories about each piece. It will help you marry Prince William's brother, it will make you like that Out of Africa Movie, it will make you....a Mistress of Milan.

So I've decided that since I'd rather not need the anti-depressants for more than the essential life conditions, it is out with the catalogs, unsubscribe from all the Gap and Old Navy email lists, and I'm going on a shopping fast. Because according to CB2, even my balcony is hopelessly insufficient for the fun I'd like to have this summer. Think of it as a late lent, and I still get to eat chocolate whenever and meat on Fridays.

I've marked 40 days on my iPhone calendar, and no purchases for home or body decoration in that time. Just to take a break from all that encouragement to want to be more, better, different. I will stop shopping or even browsing.

Right after my trip to IKEA this afternoon. Hey, even dieters "start tomorrow."

I should probably check out that podcast

2011-04-13T07:29:00.000-07:00

There is a new free podcast up from The Moth (a great series of storytelling, in short, 15-min segments that my cousin got me hooked on) from Salman Rushdie about writer's block. I should listen to it. I've been avoiding writing the last few days. The earlier two weeks, we were in the US, visiting family, having a naming ceremony for Baby A (non-religious, like we are), going back to Arizona for the first time in 2 years, and doing some shopping in Chicago.

At first, I told M that I couldn't go see our old house in AZ. I was afraid it would be too emotional, that I'd tear up just seeing it, thinking how much easier it would have been to spend Baby A's first years there. But I think we went at the right time, now that we're all feeling a lot better. We drove past the house, and I felt nothing. My things weren't in there, my car wasn't parked outside, my husband, baby and dog weren't there. I didn't even have that "what a great house that was!" reaction. We've moved, and I haven't had to worry about faulty electricals or a leaky roof for two years. That counts for something. Or a mold infestation under the kitchen floor. That really counts for something.

On the other hand, seeing friends play with, babysit, and make Baby A smile warmed my heart. And on a quieter level, made me a bit sad for not having realized what a huge help that community would have been these last few years. Not that I knew I'd need that much help when we decided to move. I guess that is the point. But until the visit I didn't realize what I'd really missed out on, how essential that support could have been. So thank you, Arizona people, for being so loving to my daughter for the short time we were there. I think she grew a few months' worth with all the smiles and hugs and attention.

I also did a bit more American shopping this trip. I'm finally realizing there are many things I like about the US and being American. And when I was replacing my Freitag bag (which has gone over to M to replace his stolen one), I went with Vy&Ellie and their billboard bag with the GM seatbelt clasp. Oh, yeah. And bought a new cheap cowboy hat at Target. Cause I'm American, dang it, and I might as well be my American self, living abroad. I'll get to smile more, say "hi" more often, and worry a lot less about how I look.

Phew. Finally started posting again.

That first time must have been a fluke

2011-03-25T05:32:00.000-07:00

You know sometimes you have such a strong experience that it colors how you remember all subsequent experiences with the same person, place or event? Yeah, I think that is what Baby A's first flight did to my at Christmas time. She was a bit feverish from a vaccine shot, and slept most of the time. On the first flight to Frankfurt, then the one to Toronto, then in Toronto. A lot. No jet lag, really snuggly baby. I got a lot of sleep, as a result, and thought "Hey, my kid is a great traveler!"

Well, I think I'm ready to admit she's just a regular toddler traveler. Because after another long flight, I finally opened my brain enough to remember that apart from that first flight, she has screamed to sleep on every flight since. Ah, the power of positive thinking. It only took me 10 more flights to realize that. I guess it was good to have the illusion for the time being and it probably helped me more than anyone, to feel like it was going to be fine.

Not that she's a maniac on flights. But it is good to remember that if it isn't night time and the plane isn't all dark, and she isn't a bit sick, it will take a bit to get her to wind down, and that will include some crying. And making sure she eats enough fiber on flights is going to take a bit more work than I put into it this time.

Oh well. At least she can eat prunes straight out of the bag now.

As for the louder-than-necessary comments from the business man in back of us on the one flight she just drifted off to sleep on, about "the earphones don't work! when does the entertainment system come on so I don't have to hear crying?", turns out my baby is less of a whiner than you are. That is all.

It'll do

2011-03-24T01:25:00.001-07:00

Last night, while preparing for a big day today, I was frantically trying to get these programs made for our naming ceremony for Baby A. Since we aren't practicing Catholics anymore, and I'm not crazy about the state of the Roman Catholic church's handling of sexual abuse of children anyway, we aren't baptizing her. But we have guardians chosen and it is still nice to officially welcome a new child into her families. So we are doing our own ceremony. Short, hopefully not to corny, but still symbolic in some ways. I think it will be nice.

But there I was trying to get my new version of iPhoto on the Mac to hurry the hell up and load photos of her so I could use the cool card template to make an amazing (and oh so stylish) program. Yeah, well, this new version of iPhoto hasn't been playing nice with all our old photos. It may take until the next decade for this software to actually do whatever precious conversions of old photos it keeps assuring me I need. Whatever, iPhoto, you're bumming me out.

So there I was, getting more frustrated, feeling the time pinch of having to get to bed soon, Baby A's intestines decided that last night was the night to either get constipated or have loads of gas and the poor thing was screaming and writhing on the bed, us not being able to help much.

I'm running around the kitchen trying to get the cumin (I think) seeds boiled and strained to make a warm tea (in case it is gas), and soak the prunes in boiling water and then mash them up to make prune juice (in case it is constipation).

I'm thinking about how we'll even do damage control to those crib sheets (and walls, and floors) if she isn't actually constipated and I just fed her two whole prunes.

I'm cursing under my breath at the Mac and restarting the whole computer.

And finally, she settles on M's chest and then asks to go to her crib. We put some loose clothes on her and she drifts off to sleep.

I go back to the desktop, inhale, exhale. Blink blink. I open MS Word, pop one photo of Baby A I have from the desktop to the document. Put the text in, print out a bunch of copies, and I'm done.

Good enough, yo. That's all that it needs to be. And I get to go to sleep, instead of feeling that sinking "I'm not even 1/4 done yet" feeling I used to get at the beginning of a long night, way behind on my thesis writing in that last month. Phew.

Oh, and I'm happy to say, there will be no baby-poo Spilled Milk #4 photo. No explosion from the diaper area last night.

Spilled mik, #2 and #3

2011-03-22T01:03:00.000-07:00

After the photo of the spilled milk came out so nice, I started taking a few others, of the things that might be called messes, that Baby A creates, but really are beautiful, too. Sure, they have to be cleaned up, but in a photo, to look at, later, when they no longer represent more work to be done, they're kind of nice.

I had one of my almost-out-the-door conversations with M this morning. Why is it that the sweet spot for interesting topics happens somewhere between the end of breakfast and the start of the commute? I guess it keeps things short, but there is an emotional space there that encourages those 7 minute chats somehow. Like the spilled milk photos, it is nice.

I was thinking about marriages and how you decide to interfere in someone else's or not. Ha ha ha. Just writing that pretty much argues for not. But what if there is some act of good will, that one person hasn't quite realized could make a huge difference to their spouse? That has to come first, that could shift the relationship ever so slightly, maybe to a place of more room and contentment. Yeah, ok, maybe that is just wishful thinking.

I like flowers, see. Not really bouquets of red roses, but I like fresh flowers, and I like them more than M realizes sometimes. (He knows this, by the way, including the not realizing part). And what if someone just reminded him to buy them a little more often. I mean, our marriage has survived, flowers or no, but would it have shifted things a bit, in a healthy way? At some tough time? Not an apology time (he knows you don't give me an "I'm sorry" bouquet - that it is just asking for trouble), but just some time when we were more rather than less out-of-sync with each other?

In other words, what is the role of all those guests who came to your wedding? To wait until you ask for marriage advice? To be there on the day and then leave you two to yourselves, only "butting in" when asked later? But by the time people ask for help it can be too late. We wait to do maintenance on our relationships sometimes. We don't even know we need a little push here or there, an anecdote about someone else's experience. Something we didn't even know we didn't know.

For instance, someone told M to take photos of me while I was pregnant and to tell me I was beautiful. And luckily, on top of that, M actually did believe it. He told me a lot. But he also did take photos. Sometimes just because he remembered the advice from another pregnant woman's husband. And it was nice. It was good for us.

Because we can't be everything to each other, or think of all of these things ourselves. Maybe that is the line, then, to suggest things to a person in a marriage, and leave them to decide whether to act on that or not. The idea might be a great one, but it remains in their hands whether or not they do it. And that is what counts in the end. It didn't matter that M didn't come up with the photo thing on his own, it matters that he took the idea and enacted it. Did the few seconds extra of effort to take those photos.

Huh. So do I say something to the spouse of a friend or not? I guess I'll have to see how I feel. Although spilled milk can make for a beautiful image, sometimes you need someone to buy you that new mop to make the clean up just that much easier.

Sunday afternoon

2011-03-20T07:29:00.000-07:00

A slight damp-cold day has turned into a beautiful spring, 55 F and sunny afternoon. My baby girl, poor thing, must still be sick, what with the phenomenal poo she had this morning, the small appetite and now going into her 4th hour of napping. She never does this. Not this long. And I heard another splurt from her (and the smell) about an hour ago and wonder when do I wake her up to just change the diaper so this doesn't turn into a rash, too?

Four hours. I've gotten a nap (I'm a bit sick, too, I guess, tired after a 2 hour nap and good night of sleep). M has gotten a nap. I'm writing in my blog on a Sunday with no babysitter in sight. I have a non-instant coffee. M and I have made some lists and decisions about something other than the next 2 hours. I've had a chance to sit with my Oprah magazine (can I tell you how excited I get everytime it arrives here? So American, without being all about celebrities and fashion and sex quizzes. And the book section practically summons my Kindle out of the drawer it inhabits.), and decide I'm not in the mood to read it. Yes, I'm sick, too.

I flip some colorful pages and wonder why the magazine has so many beauty product advertisers when it also contains so much "love yourself the way you are" writing. The writing I like, the ads make me a bit tired.

Crows and magpies sit on still-bare branches outside the living room window, so from the chaise that has broken free of the sofa and come to the corner, I can still see the city and the lake. In summer that won't be true, anymore. But then dinners, and afternoon baths, will provide all the contentment instead.

Four hours. I've watered the tulip bulbs that came home from Amsterdam. And I have a bit-too-hot bath tub waiting, bubbles and all, to clean that little bum when it wakes up. Sunlight warms my legs through the window. The door to the balcony is open for the pupper to come and go as she pleases on such a warm afternoon.

I hear a tiny cry. Time to go washa-wahsa.

Might as well get used to it: Spilled milk #1

2011-03-16T05:05:00.000-07:00

The concept of motherhood continues to mystify me. But so did the concept of bride-hood, wife-hood, PhD-hood, etc.

The other night, baby A woke up at 11:45pm first crying, then when I tried to get her the binky and then the water bottle, things turned ugly. It was a full-on, arching back, screeching like being tortured 10 minutes.

I tried to hold her upright.

No good.

I tried to rock her.

Are you kidding me?

I changed her diaper.

Nice to be dry, but not the main problem. Screeeeeeeeeam!

M came in with a bottle.

Again, no thanks.

And then, in a mirror to the previous night when I had gone in and repeated exactly what M had tried but I was successful, M took her.

He held her upright.

Sigh.

He layed down in the bed with her on his chest.

Deep sigh.

Grumbling under the breath (this one was me).

I hate when M can calm her when I can't. This is the part of motherhood that I'm still figuring out. I think I was raised to believe that being a mother is about being the most comforting person for your little person. That I'm the one she is supposed to want when she's sick, sad, woken up from a nightmare (one of our guesses about those two nights), upset. That some of what I get back for all the patience and calm, for the playing and loving, is pole position when it comes to soothing. My smell, my voice and my body are supposed to be the best at this.

But that isn't how it works with Baby A.

Turns out, M has the perfect touch for rocking her - no one else can anymore. And for getting her to nap on his chest - that flight from Amsterdam would have gotten a lot quieter sooner had his chest been there.

And just as I come to terms with having my body back, now it is rejected in a very intimate way. By the little being I want it to help soothe. (Note to self: eat more, and gain back that weight, because obviously the slimmer you doesn't make up for this). There may be nothing that will change this.

So I have to rethink mothering again. Maybe go back to what I learned when no body (not a single one) could soothe her best - that my job as a mother is to look out for her and make sure she gets what she most needs and what best calms her. It isn't necessarily to be that one who best calms her, but to search out those people and things and situations.

Because if I keep thinking I'm supposed to be her go-to, and it isn't working, I'm going to feel pretty hurt. I tell you what, babies are a huge lesson in not taking things personally.

Yes, I believe I would like fries with that

2011-03-15T12:16:00.000-07:00

There I was, with my tuna salad wrap, on the tram heading home. Once again, I was eating lunch too late and I was starving. Three teenagers, two girls and a guy, maybe 17 or 18 years old sat in the seats around me - the girls facing me, the guy next to me. The guy spoke just a bit too loudly as teenage boys sometimes do, and the girls both had the huge sunglasses and carefully done hair. Not a super snobby group, but not un-self conscious, either.

I ate most of the wrap, down to a final half handful of tuna salad, that had slid out of the wrap into its cardboard holder. Dang. I was still hungry and I wanted all my tuna salad, but I could clearly feel that there was no way I was going to go in there with my bare fingers. Not in front of Swiss teenagers. Not these teenagers.

I really shouldn't care. I've got a kid, I'm busy, I'm hungry, deal with it. But nope, I left that tuna salad where it fell and wrapped it, and put it back in my backpack. I'd be switching trams soon anyway. I could eat it then.

Two stops before mine, the teenagers got off. And across the way from me was a vision in "I could care less" - two twelve year old boys with Whoppers and fries.

The tram took off again. The boys were inhaling those burgers and fries with the kind of abandon I respect. If I were indulging in that meal, I'd want the freedom to do exactly the same. Fries flying on the floor, lettuce drenched in mayo dripping into the box. Fingers covered in awesome.

I pulled out my tuna salad remains, stuck my fingers in and, in the best of company, finished my lunch. When it comes to food and hungry, I'd rather be a twelve year old boy at heart. And wish I could say that of twelve year old girls, too. But I think they are already too worried about how they look, what other people think. I'm going to have to figure out how to avoid that as much as I can with baby A.

Then again, given that I am the one sadly stashing my tuna salad, and she most definitely gets into her food body and soul, maybe she's going to need to do her best to save my butt instead.

Yup. Its spring.

2011-03-14T13:12:00.000-07:00

There it is. The rogue daffodil that has somehow made its way to our balcony garden and decided to flower before anything else is even ready. But that's just one of the signs.

The crocuses are blooming in our neighborhood.

The sky is blue and the high was 56 F today.

I don't freak out when baby A pulls off her hat anymore, but I still say no bare feet unless we're in the bus/tram.

My orange trench coat was warm enough, and I could have made due without socks myself.

The checklist is up in the elevator asking us all to turn off our balcony faucets so that water can be turned on again.

It is light outside when baby A wakes up now, and trust me, she's not sleeping in.

But really, just like with the shedding that is probably soon to be in full swing, the biggest indicator to me that spring is here....I shaved my legs (If only I could shed instead of shaving) after some 3 months of furriness. I didn't wear a skirt or shorts. But that doesn't matter. Its spring.

Amsterdam with a toddler

2011-03-11T01:32:00.000-08:00

With all trips I've planned or just dreamt about recently, to moderately large towns, I start at the New York Times. They have a travel section called "36 Hours in _____" and I just Google that with the name of the city. This tends to give me a good overview of some things to try, and I usually find at least one restaurant recommendation or the like to try out. The toddler in our lives means I tend to skip all of their suggestions for after 6pm, but I like having one recommended thing to start with. This time, it was a restaurant called Pancakes Amsterdam! I think that it was actually called something different in the 2007 article from the NYT, but we found it and it was perfect.

It is in a charming area called the "9 streets", full of cute little boutique shops that furnished me with a beautiful pair of earrings and 2 dresses, too. Tiny place, lots of traffic, so we had to go down the street, found some coffee (that gift from the Northern European gods is discussed below), and came back 40 minutes later. They have crepe type pancakes, American style one, and all sorts of yumminess in between. We had one with bacon, leek and cheese, and one with coconut milk, bananas and coconut shavings.

That's Baby A happily decimating the bacon one. She then went on to pick the coconut shavings of the sweet one, which shows you how much her father loves her, given that he's likely to do the same. Very baby friendly, complete with IKEA plastic utensils, plastic baby eating tarps, and some kid books. The waiter kept cooing at Baby A, too. We liked it so much, that she and I went back there the day we were on our own before flying home.

Speaking of the coffee we went to get while waiting to have pancakes...There is the toddler, having a great time trying to catch pidgeons outside the best coffee I've had in years at the Dutch chain Coffee Company. This was actually our second Coffee Company visit, the next day, but the coffee happiness was pretty constant at all 3 shops we went to. The shops are all in bold colors and the place might look too corporate at first, but these lattes could hold a spoon upright while the espresso shots slowly dissolve it.

So, most important things (food and coffee) covered, next I'll touch on accomodations. A lot of the B&B's in the city were booked, or had a 2-night minimum. The hotels were wither really pricey or had so-so reviews on Trip Advisor (another site I rely on very heavily for planning trips. I spend a lot of time looking at the reviews). So my other new favorite travel site, AirBnB came to the rescue. I love this site. It is full of individuals renting out a room or whole apartment/house they own. Usually cheaper than a hotel. And the best part, as far as traveling with a kid, you can find a place with a living room space (for a little person to stretch her legs and unwind after hours in the stroller) and a kitchen. Some even have a washer/dryer in the unit! We stayed at one in Chicago over the holidays and loved it. The one in Amsterdam, from Mia, was also great. I was looking for a place in the Leidseplein area of Amsterdam after reading a review that it was surrounded by great little streets and shops, etc. Loved the place. There was a grocery store around the corner (also great for travel with kids, and the sort of thing people tell you about on their AirBnB listing), as well as a tram stop from the train station. So, try out AirBnB - I stick to listings that have gotten at least a few reviews and are good reviews. I stay away from listings (just like with TripAdvisor) that have mention of crazy landlords who flip out. For me, no amount of great reviews can buffer the potential of an unstable personality. Even more so when I'm traveling with my kid.

Ok. Those were the basics of a good trip. I just happen to love the architecture and vibe of Amsterdam, too. And just to be extra confusing, let me put the first part last. When we got out of the train station and I knew from Mia's text message (ooh, having a local cell phone, with a working Google Maps is really really really nice - I have a horrible sense of direction, and I like it better than pulling out a huge map that screams "tourist!" At least in Northern Europe I can fake it sometimes. Especially in tall-person Netherlands.) to grab the 1, 2 or 5 tram. I went into the tourist office across the street from the train station and bought a map (just because I don't like using them doesn't mean I won't), a TimeOut Amsterdam magazine in English full of food suggestions (I like food. Can you tell? Like, a lot. And I like finding restaurant gems even more), a transport card for trams and buses, and tickets for the following day to the Van Gogh museum. All before heading to our place for the night.

Turned out to be a great thing. I went to get take-out from a delicious Thai restaurant that was reviewed that month, for dinner that night in the apartment. We didn't have to bother with change for the trams. And best of all, the next day when we were trying to visit the Van Gogh museum quickly enough (in an hour, pick a few rooms and not try to see the whole thing) to get Baby A down for her noon nap, we went straight in without waiting in line to buy tickets. Fabulous. The museum itself was pretty roomy, even with a crowd so Baby A wandered and pushed her stroller while we took turns seeing the paintings in a room. She even practiced her new hands-folded-across-chest art critic pose once, which got a bunch of smiles. And the restaurant there had a decent selection of food for lunch for us. Sorry, no photos allowed in the museum, so none here.

And there you have it. Amsterdam with a toddler. In 24 hours, even. Oh, last thing, trains run to and from the airport every 15 minutes or so, many Dutch speak fantastic English, and M's bag got stolen on the train into Amsterdam a few days later, from the above-head luggage rack so although it is a charming town, it isn't crime free.

I had it coming

2011-03-10T03:52:00.001-08:00

Remember yesterday, when I couldn't say enough good things about Amsterdam? I mean, I even forgot about the cupcakes which were just one more selling point for me. Well, on his way to the airport to come home, M's work bag got stolen. Gah!

Phone, wallet, USB stick with last few presentations and passport were all in his jacket, thank heaven. But a new book for Baby A, the house keys, the mailbox key, and his work notebook were all in there. And we're talking professional job, complete with distractor guy spilling coins on the ground while someone else must have grabbed the bag from the luggage rack and gotten off in Amsterdam. Jerks.

So yes, I'm a bit cooler on Amsterdam, but not much. I mean, that is something that could happen in Chicago, Toronto, New York for sure, half of Europe at least. My mind went more to thoughts of why Switzerland isn't like that and what is the social cost of such safety. I mean, here if you lose this kind of thing, you get it back. Cash intact. Granted, not if it is stolen. But so far we've had many things returned to us that have lost their way. But there is still something about the society that doesn't feel as warm in connection with this phenomenon of things always being returned. Maybe the phenomena is due to fear of repercussions. That would make things less warm and fuzzy. People being nice to you so they don't get in trouble. Japan felt a bit like that, too. Safe. Very safe. At the cost of what, though? Meaning, is the safety worth whatever the cost is? Or would I rather live somewhere where my big city radar needs to be turned up a bit, but that is more vibrant perhaps?

Anyway, there it is. A stolen bag and a dog with an itchy skin condition upon our return home. Those pancakes sure were good, though. I'll leave the 24 hours in Amsterdam for tomorrow. I need to go call the rental company to report the stolen keys, and we're low on clean clothes, too.

Amazing coffee, and pancake restaurants everywhere

2011-03-09T07:26:00.000-08:00

If the Dutch language doesn't have die/der/das articles, I'm moving. M and Baby A and I were in the Netherlands this weekend. What a charming place. And seriously, the coffee I got, in a low, round bowl, had all the makings of a Cambridge, Mass, Porter Square latte. I think M might have drunk 3 double shot drinks in one day just to try to fill up that amazing-coffee-shaped-hole in his heart.

Amsterdam found its way into my heart in under an hour. The old buildings, the people, the non-Swiss chewing gum stains, the pancakes. These people respect the pancake in all its glory - we had one with bacon, leeks and cheese, and another with coconut and bananas. Baby A made sure to get as much of the coconut one as her father would let her have.

Bicycles everywhere. We even got to rent one in Leiden where we were visiting friends and go around the extremely flat town on two wheels. A was quite happy sitting in the little baby seat on the front handlebars, complete with her own handles to hold.

The weather was good, for this time of year, I guess. But the fact that it was a damp cold, about 5 degrees colder than Zurich and I'm still gushing about the place means I must have really liked it.

It was my first solo flight with Baby A, and we did okay. She was with me the whole day, hung in there like a trooper in her stroller, and while she had a 15 minute screaming, pre-nap episode in the plane, I survived it. No glasses broken, and she finally stopped kicking and flailing, took her binky back, and passed out in my arms.

I also think we found just enough cool things to do in Amsterdam to make it a really packed but successful visit with a toddler. So tomorrow I'm going to take a page from how the New York Times does their "36 hours in...." travel series, which I always check for a new city I'm going to, and do one for 24 hours, with toddler, in Amsterdam. Pancakes, strong coffee, Van Gogh, and Miffy included.

The orange trench coat wants to go somewhere

2011-03-04T08:33:00.000-08:00

I've been lusting after bright (not light) orange clothing items online for the last few months. There was this J Crew coat that I stalked for a while, watching the price go down, then realizing the quantities in my size had just done the same. Oops. It was a great coat and I'm sure I would have been an overall happier person wearing it instead of my mainstay black coat.

Just like I was sure about the orange H&M sweater today that I didn't buy, and the orange H&M trench coat that I did. There sure are a lot of orange coats that I'm not sure I'd be happier in on Etsy, too. Now the weather has to actually get a bit warmer so it can be a grey, rainy but not so cold day and I can brighten it up in my orange trench coat.

I am also frantically emailing all manor of B&B's and vacation rentals for an upcoming trip. I put this part off a bit too long, and there is not a lot left now. Although, yet again, AirBnB.com seems to have come through again. They list rooms, apartments and houses for rent all over the world. We stayed in one in Chicago that was perfect - a one bedroom loft apartment with a washer dryer and baby bed available. Free street parking. Close to museums and shopping. Great person doing the renting. Large cities have a lot of options on AirBnB, smaller cities, not so many. But with a toddler, it is nice to have more floor space, a fridge, a stove, etc.

But back to the coat that will make me happier (as well as prettier, more interesting, and way cooler). It really needs to warm up now, because I'm stuck being boring, bland, and tragically unhip right now. Ok, I'm mostly joking. But I do judge myself pretty harshly on a daily basis about things like this. I see those happier, better woman on the tram, bus, coffee shop, everywhere but in the mirror. And it isn't just about learning to feel good enough intrinsically anymore (although this should be the main goal). It is about teaching my daughter the same. I mean, she's absolutely adorable (and, conversely, can be a screaming demon) no matter what she's wearing. I love her just the same. And my husband. And my friends. Family. Pretty much everyone gets this pass from me but me.

That's not true. I can be brutal to women on trams and buses. In my head. But (have I written about this before?) I notice so many little details. Now, the step that follows, where I then connect those details to the person's worth, that's the part I'm trying to change. Because I'll always notice a lot. But it doesn't have to turn into America's Next Top Model in my brain.

The trench coat is very quiet at this moment. But I've promised her that even if I do find some hidden spring of confidence, she'll still be going out to see the sights soon. I mean, she's bright orange after all.

I'd rather not spend $5000 on your painting, thanks.

2011-03-03T11:23:00.000-08:00

I've been spending time on Etsy, lately. The website where people sell all sorts of handmade stuff. Great website, lots of things I've put in my "favorites" file, but only a few things I've ever bought. Anyway, this site is HUGE. Full of all sorts of great (and horrible) stuff. And pretty hard for me to navigate some things.

Like jewelry. How do you manage to do a web search on this site for "not ugly, tacky jewelry, and not stuff I won't like" ? There is a lot of chaff to get through for a few bits of wheat. I recently bought a great necklace from this seller.
But her crochet stuff is listed smack dab in the middle of a lot of boring crocheted jewelry. I can't even remember how I found her. I certainly didn't go in there with "crochet" and "necklace" in my list of search terms.

There are so many little gems of shops on Etsy, but it takes a lot of time to find them. Like this one with animal silhouette pictures and handmade stuffed animals. How cute is that?

And then there is the artwork. Original artwork. Thousands of pieces of oil paintings alone. Just for fun I ordered them from most to least expensive. Let's just say the $100,000 pieces are not encouraging. And that at almost every price, the naked woman's body art is....meh. And then at the $200 range, where I could seriously consider a purchase, again, some horrible stuff, and some cute things. One woman does a still life painting every day - I read about her in some magazine and accidentally stumbled on her page on Etsy.

I've moved from general oil paintings to still lifes, in the $100-$200 region. Not sure why, but I think I like the black and dark colors in many of them, with the surprise of orange for a piece of fruit, or sky blue on a bowl. I guess you need to go into Etsy with some pretty specific items in mind, and then it isn't so overwhelming.

(20 minutes later)

Ok, I went back to my still lifes on Etsy, and realized what I need to do. I searched on one type of fruit, I chose the lemon, and there they were. The super realistic, the too dark, the ones I thought were boring, the ugly, the intriguing. It was easy to find ones I liked and see what else the artists did. And it turns out many different artists do this "one painting a day" thing, and there are actually a lot of $35-50 still lifes I like. A lot. How cool.

Crying it out

2011-03-02T07:44:00.001-08:00

When we first got the Pupper from the Human Society, we signed her (and, more importantly, us) for an 8 week training class. The head trainer was amazing, equally patient with dogs and their humans. The other trainers helping him liked dogs, but often got short with us humans. And really, the class was meant to train the humans to carry out commanding correctly. This class was a no yelling, no punishment class. All positive reinforcement. The basic principle was very simple and applied to every command:

1. Say (or hand motion) the command;

2. If the dog does nothing, you do nothing;

3. If the dog does what you wanted (perhaps coming by a gentle pull of the leash toward you those first few times), say "Yes!" all excited and happy as soon as the command has been executed and give a cookie.

A few years later, at a dog park in Tucson, the I saw the power of positive reinforcement used for a horrible purpose. A "trainer" was working with a man and his dog just outside the fence of the dog park, having the man yank the dog's choke chain harder and harder each time the dog misunderstood a command to heel while walking. Harder, harder, until I was close to an anxiety attack for the poor animal and the beautiful German Shepherd was cowering and whimpering. It was grotesque. And the "trainer" seemed to be having fun, calling out "yank! yes! yes! harder! good! good job!"

It was the first time I'd had the nerve to say something to someone else about their behavior and I managed some wavering "if you don't want to hurt your dog while training, the Human Society has great classes. This isn't training, this is abuse" the former directed at owner, the latter at "trainer." Of course the "trainer" got pretty upset with me, and I don't know if I got through to the owner. I was shaking, heart pounding.

Only later did I realize the irony of the situation - the dog had learned nothing through punishment and pain. The real results came from the positive reinforcement. The trainer was getting the owner to be more and more violent with his dog by applying the same principles our dog class teacher had - praise and encouragement. You can bet that owner would have walked away had the "trainer" said something like "you idiot, can't you even hold your dog right?" I wish I had realized that at the time.

Just as before, the dark side of positive reinforcement hit me this morning as I was reading a moms' forum about using the Cry It Out method, applied to kids who just kept crying and getting sick with despair. I've mentioned before the one incident where Baby A smacked her mouth on the crib and started bleeding which convinced me that Cry It Out just wasn't going to work for us - it went past my limit. I'd rather have a kid that wakes up more often than a bloody kid. And just like with that dog, I don't think Cry It Out works on all kids, and that it is harmful to keep using it no-matter-what. That can just land certain parents and kids in a traumatic place.

But these books, be they about Crying It Out or other parenting techniques that encourage us parents to do things that make our kids cry, bleed, throw up, get so upset...they are doing the same damn thing. Using positive reinforcement on us the readers, the parents ("Keep at it! Nothing comes easily! It's okay for kids to cry! You're a better parent for doing this!") to get us to do things to our kids that may not be where we wanted to be. That put our relationship with our kids in conflict. That encourage us to stop listening to them, in lieu of listening to some author who does not live in our house with our child.

I know, sometimes we have to say "No" and kids will cry. A lot. But I'm realizing that I want to be a whole lot more skeptical about books and blogs and "experts" who prey on my desire to be a good parent to encourage me to do things that make me uncomfortable.

Somedays you're the windshield...

2011-03-01T04:05:00.001-08:00

Like this past weekend, with its gelato and fresh pastas with end of season truffles from a private chef. Latte machiattos from steaming machines.

And sometimes, you're the bug.

I'm spending more of today's time on labeling this blog finally.

The not so sunny Italian part of Switzerland

2011-02-28T12:05:00.000-08:00

Never mind that, though. It was different. A getaway. A chance to sleep and eat somewhere other than Zurich, which meant I didn't constantly see things that still needed to be finished in the apartment, or laundry, or dishes, or mail. We had another spectacular meal at Il Tartufo, with N and L (and A) who came with us to Locarno. In essence, it was a meal catered by a private chef for us. In a cozy little restaurant with a fireplace and space for the girls to play on the floor. We were the only ones there. It was very very nice.

And the babies had a great time chasing each other in the great apartment we found at a B&B on the hill near the monastery. We went on a boat ride to the other side of the lake where pretty much nothing was open and it was also chilly and damp. Baby A went back to crawling part time in order to chase the other Baby A around the kitchen table and down the hallways. They even learned to actually play together on something a few times. Not just near each other or stealing each others' toys.

Finally, there is a huge round loaf of Ticino bread in our kitchen waiting for us for breakfast, from the bakery near the train station. And a new app for buying train tickets, sitting on my phone. The conductor scanned the barcode on my phone screen. Crazy technology. And some moments of sunlight on the train trip home through the snowy alps.

Or maybe the dog shouldn't come with...

2011-02-25T12:10:00.000-08:00

Poor pupper. She gets a lot of flack from us at mealtimes. She has started cruising not only the dining room table but also the kitchen counters. We used to never give her food that we ate, apart from a piece of bread here and there. And once in a while, she would get her claws into a loaf (or, on miraculous days, the butter next to the bread). But she very rarely went for the high surfaces.

But not anymore. She is a fully, two-legged creature when it comes to relieving our tables and counter tops of their edible offerings. It drives me up the wall. I yell and clap at her. I don't like baby A seeing that behavior from me, but she is part instigator - it is her food that the dog has started to get access to. By accidental drop on the floor followed by our lack of energy to clean it up before the dog gets it. Also on purpose, when the roaming eater that is our child meets the roaming eater that is our dog.

This has also led to our dog gaining some kilos.

Tonight the dog was away during dinner and bedtime, and it was so much calmer. Now I just have to figure out a way to translate that to when the dog is home. She already has to "go to bed" (i.e. her crate) when the food is on the table. But afterward is it one long inhale, as her nose travels the floor. Food goes in, fluff goes in, who knows what else makes it in there.

There are times I wish we had a yard. Very few, given the amount of work it takes to maintain even a simple one, but this is one of them.

On being human

2011-02-24T04:07:00.001-08:00

When I told friends that M got baby A to laugh for the first time, one of them emailed me to say that in Navajo culture, the advent of the first laugh is considered a special moment when the child truly becomes human. And the person who gets the first laugh from a baby is supposed to throw a party to celebrate. Well, the party has yet to be thrown, in line behind so many others we have yet to throw - to meet our neighbors in the building, to have M's students and postdocs over, etc.

Last night was another tough one for baby A, and us, by extension. She seemed to have a lot of painful gas and would cry for 10 seconds, whimper, scream, then fall asleep again on the bed next to me, or on my chest. This went on for a while, and at times I was frantically looking for her binky in the dark, because I was sure that this time she might finally fall off to sleep for longer, taking me with her. Well, usually we have 2 glow-in-the-dark binkies in her room - one in her possession and one for when that first one gets chucked into some far corner of the room, under or behind something and we can't see it glowing. Last night, however, at bedtime, we couldn't find anything more than 2 non-glowing binkies.

Seriously? Two?! And neither glow?! This is cause for great alarm in our still sleep deprived household. Nothing is open at that hour, and we'd better be ready to find a stealth binky with our hands and knees in a dark room full of hiding places if things get unsettled.

Luckily, the unsettling of last night didn't have to do with plain-old, sub-glorious binkies. M wound up feeding baby A a bottle and rocking her upright until she fell asleep and the rest of the night went pretty well.

This morning, after a heartier than recent breakfast, baby A was playing in the dining room as we were getting her ready to leave for daycare. She started playing with a cardboard box by the window, and as M went to go help her open it, they both gasped. And he started laughing. "Guess what's in here."

I had no idea.

Baby A stuck her hand in, and came out with 4 glow-in-the-dark binkies.

We both started laughing. She's been creatively stashing all sorts of things lately, in her onesie (toy cars from school), in her diaper (not just things coming out of her back end), in her pajama feet. And the girl is most serene and grounded when she has one binky in her mouth and another one in her hand. Having 4 of them to stash in the cardboard box must have felt like a mindfulness meditation workshop to this baby.

I remarked to M that she's getting to the age where she makes him laugh. A very important quality to him. Especially these days, when things can still get overwhelming, and it still feels like a trudge to bedtime some nights.

And he said, "Yeah, she makes us human again."

The pupper needs an iPhone

2011-02-23T07:40:00.001-08:00

Angry Birds is a very addictive game for the iPhone. It probably comes with a version for any smartphone and beyond. Uses real physics principles for catapulting variously talented (they split into 3, they drop egg bombs, they explode) birds at creatively protected pigs. In the game, the meanie pigs have stolen the birds' eggs, so they have it coming. And when you don't blow them all up using all the birds you've been allotted, they smile smugly at you. At this point, your heart rate goes up, you vow to show those pigs a lesson, and as soon as the screen asks you "try again?" your finger slams the "ok" (or as I experience it "hell yes!") key.

One of the most anxious moments in Angry Birds comes when you've knocked a wooden or stone beam out of place and it is just barely hanging in place, just above a soon-to-be-mocking-you pig. You tilt the phone in hopes the beam will fall. Maybe you blow at the screen. And about half the time, after a few seconds of wobbling, it falls! Score!

Anyway, even though our dog doesn't play Angry Birds and has never had a physics class, even she gets the point about precariously balanced objects. We gave this one a wide clearance.

Don't tell your kids they are smart

2011-02-22T00:40:00.000-08:00

When we were back in the US for Christmas break, I picked up a book co-written by an author I like, Nurture Shock . Po Bronson had written a book about changing careers, "What Should I Do With My Life?", full of stories about people who had made huge career changes. It came at just the right time for me, as I was getting up the nerve to quit astronomy. I remember only a few things about the book (as I do with most of what I read), that I liked it, and that almost all the people in the book were forced to change careers. No one calmly sat down and wrote a list of pros and cons of being a day trader and decided it was healthier to follow their dreams of running a diner. Everyone went through a crisis - a divorce, a death in the family, a stroke or heart attack, a paralyzing depression - and this pretty much catapulted them in a new career. They could no longer do what they had been doing before. It made me realize I didn't have to be ashamed that it "took me so long to quit." Unfortunately, my will was strong enough to get me through 5 unproductive, unhappy graduate school years before a major depression hit and I couldn't continue. But that book showed me that this is the natural order of how big career changes happen to a lot of people.

Anyway, apart from recommending that book, I wanted to talk about the more recent book, Nurture Shock. It is a collection of chapters on child development, and the first chapter lands right in the middle of some of the literature I was reading for my dissertation. On praise and intelligence. The first chapter talks mostly about Carol Dweck's research on the perils of praising kids (and I extended that to adults) for their success as an outcome of being smart. Saying "good job! you're so smart" actually seems to set kids up for trouble. They start to worry that they won't be smart enough for the next task they approach and being to avoid challenges. I think of it as hearing "Each person is some fixed amount of smart. If you were smarter than this math test, the next math test could be smarter than you, and people will know you were not smart enough to pass it. You should hide how smart you are and avoid challenges because it is good to be smarter than others and bad to be less smart."

I'm not even going to get into the concept of intelligence today, but the results of Dweck's research suggest we should praise achievement by attributing it to effort - "Good job! You must have tried hard on that test." This encouraged the children in her studies to see challenges (and trying hard) as a good, fun thing. They enjoyed harder tests, even when they didn't do that well on them. In contrast, the kids who had been praised for smarts tended to try hiding any effort they had to expend.

We say "good job!" a lot around the house these days. And whenever I can, I add in something about effort. I think there is a lot to be learned from this research that applies to the culture of academia, but I'll leave that for another day.

"The American Way of Life"

2011-02-21T02:36:00.000-08:00

On the homestretch to writing my thesis, E was my writing partner. We'd meet online, with chat windows open, fill each other in on what we were about to work on, set our Zen-bell alarm clocks and work for 45 minutes.

Ding!

We would take a 5-10 minute break, either go get some coffee in our respective kitchens, or do a debriefing on how our work had gone and anything that had been problematic.

Then the alarm programs would be reset and Ding! another 45 minutes.

Sometimes we did just one or two sessions, but other days, when there was a looming deadline, it would be 5 or 6 sessions. It was the only way I got so much done in such a contracted period of time.

And I think it worked so well because of a quote that E brought to one of our sessions..."Writing leads to motivation, not the other way around." It was that first 5 minutes of the first 45 minute session which were the hardest.

So here I am, trying to put this into practice again. I'm still ramping up to get back to work after a month of debilitating back problems, but I really want to get back to producing something from my dissertation that is accessible (and palatable) to more than just my committee members. I'll try to write about my work a few days a week, but just sitting down to write every day is the best way for me to start again.

Since Mondays need to be slowly settled into whenever possible, I'm aiming for fun photos and light topics. Like the maple syrup bottle at our table at brunch yesterday. M and I had a lunch date, courtesy of our babysitter, and we opted for comfort food, at Bohemia, instead of the anxiety producing exercise of roaming Zurich's old town in search of a menu and ambiance we liked. Pancakes and eggs benedict won.

And on our table was a brand I'd seen already on peanut butter here in the stores. "Nick: the easy rider." That's a brand? Complete with red, white and blue fonts and stars. What we couldn't decide was if it was really ignorance of Americana, or a deliberate aim at kitsching it WAAAAAY up. Or something in between. Did the company know that the branding was weird and at best American-derivative?

Who knows. The pancakes, although outrageously expensive, were pretty good. And on a cold rainy sunday, in a Cuban-ish restaurant/bar, American enough.